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View Full Version : DHCP with manual IP address - Airport Express / PowerBooks



adriantoll
Sep 28, 2005, 08:16 AM
I'm setting up a home network with an Airport Express for a couple of friends of mine who both have PowerBooks. I want to use fixed IP addresses for the PowerBooks so I can administer them remotely (sometimes it's a real pain knowing about computers isn't it? friends call you up all the time etc. etc. etc.... but that's another story).

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I've tried setting their powerbook network airport TCP/IP settings to "DHCP with Manual IP" and using 10.0.1.2 & 10.0.1.3 as the IP addresses, but when I use that their internet connection drops, even if I'm using the address that Airport Express gave them in the first place. This is also true if I change them to previously unused addresses like 10.0.1.4 and so on. I've tried changing the settings on the Airport Express, like the number of IP addresses it gives out and so on, but nothing seems to work.

It seems that there are a few people who've had the same problem but received no response, some from this site...

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=147989&highlight=airport+manual

... and some around the internet as I've been trawling for the solution.

I've been able to replicate this problem at home with my Powerbook and Airport Extreme, so it's not just their setup, or their Powerbooks, or just Airport Express.

It seems strange, given that the Airport Express is on default settings, and they've only just got their Powerbooks - shouldn't these things just work?! Any help gratefully received...

[edit] Just found this, which I suppose might help, but I've tried doing what this guy did and it didn't work for me...

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44177

... and I don't understand why I should have to specify the DNS settings when all I want is to get a manual IP. When I try what he did, rather than saying I don't have a connection it just sits there as if it's looking for the website, whether I use the Airport Express for DNS (which seems a strange setting anyway) or my ISP's DNS servers.


sreedy
Sep 28, 2005, 08:32 AM
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I've tried setting their powerbook network airport TCP/IP settings to "DHCP with Manual IP" and using 10.0.1.2 & 10.0.1.3 as the IP addresses

I haven't used the Airport express but shouldn't your internal ip's be in the 192.168.x.x range?

If you assign the IP via plain old DHCP what do they get? If that works then just use that one as the maanual IP setting afterwards.
Le Big Mac
Sep 28, 2005, 09:16 AM
... and I don't understand why I should have to specify the DNS settings when all I want is to get a manual IP. When I try what he did, rather than saying I don't have a connection it just sits there as if it's looking for the website, whether I use the Airport Express for DNS (which seems a strange setting anyway) or my ISP's DNS servers.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but I think if you use manual IP you have to specify all the settings, not just the IP address. It won't pull any info through DHCP if you set it to manual.
adriantoll
Sep 28, 2005, 09:38 AM
Airport Express gives out IP addresses in the range 10.0.1.2 to 10.0.1.255 by default, and uses 10.0.1.1 as its own address.

If I use simple DHCP it gives the address 10.0.1.2 - which I've tried using with DHCP with manual address and it doesn't work.

Airport Express has a few settings, including DHCP, DHCP with manual address, and Manual. The first is completely automatic, and works. The second just lets you specify the IP address, and sets the subnet mask and router address automatically, with DNS servers optional - this doesn't work with either no DNS servers specified or the DNS servers set to the ISPs DNS servers. I haven't been able to get Manual to work either, but I don't really want to use that - I want to get DHCP with manual address working because it's the simplest (or so I thought...)
adriantoll
Sep 30, 2005, 04:01 PM
Errrrrrrrrrr, so I guess that'll be a no then? No-one has experienced or sorted out this problem?
gentryunderwood
Oct 5, 2005, 02:46 PM
Errrrrrrrrrr, so I guess that'll be a no then? No-one has experienced or sorted out this problem?

for what it's worth, i'm having the same problem, and the DNS change didn't help me either...
gentryunderwood
Oct 5, 2005, 02:51 PM
Looks like DHCP with manual is really a special form of DHCP:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107866
gentryunderwood
Oct 5, 2005, 02:54 PM
switching to manual entry and filling in a public DNS server (4.2.2.2) along with my own IP address seems to have solved things for me...
xsedrinam
Oct 5, 2005, 02:55 PM
Have you given a try with:
DNS - 10.10.0.1
IP - 10.10.0.2xx
The local gateway might be sitting on something.
Edit: Good to know
adriantoll
Oct 5, 2005, 03:00 PM
Excellent - thanks for the replies, and especially the link to the Apple documentation. Looks like I'll have to configure it manually...

Well, I've managed to configure it manually and it was really rather easy - just use the settings that were there when DHCP was on (although it seemed to select a higher IP address - 10.0.1.3 rather than 10.0.1.2 - perhaps because the DHCP lease hadn't run out? I don't know whether DHCP "leases" last for long...) and then had a look through the support section of my ISPs website to get the caching DNS servers and it seemed to work fine. Don't know why I couldn't get that to work earlier... :rolleyes: