Setting up a static IP address

Hi there,

I'm about to embark on port forwarding and setting up a static ip address.

Can anyone tell me in plain English, not how to do this, but whether there is a bad side to it, like will it damage my system, does it leave me open to attack / viruses, will it crash my network and stop it from connecting to the internet

plus

Is it reversible? If it all goes horribly wrong, can I change it back to how it was and would I need to?

Any advice on the pros and cons of static ip addresses / portforwarding would be gratefully received.

All the best

Shark

I just did it to use Azureus. No it will not damage your system. It will not leave you open to attacks. It is reversible (as I found out the first time I did it and did it wrong )

When you do it, print out the instructions first, could be hard to go back to the web page for them after changing some settings.

Thanks Cradom, I will.

There's no danger to assigning a static IP to a machine. You don't even have to move your entire network to static IP; you can just do it for the one or two machines that need it.

Automatic assignment of an IP is done with DHCP. Your router will have a range of IPs that it will assign via DHCP. For example, mine will allocate 10.0.0.100 to 10.0.0.254 to DHCP clients. This leaves me 10.0.0.2 to 10.0.0.99 for use as static IPs (10.0.0.1 is the router itself).

There is nothing inherently dangerous about static IP - it's just a more manual way of doing what DHCP does for you. The worst that can happen is that you will get a problem and just change the settings back to what they were (make a note of EVERY setting you change).

I have run my Mac both ways - static IP up until a few weeks ago, and then DHCP dynamic IPs since I took out Verizon FiOS (what a GREAT service that is!! Can you say "FAST"? <grin>). It has worked seamlessly both ways. So, it is definitely reversable - just change a few settings in the Network area of your System Preferences.