Setting IP's for all of my Macs?

[zoran]

There are 4 Apple computers (iMac, MacMini, MBPro and a PowerBook) all in a home network, 2 wired Ethernet (iMac, MacMini) connected and 2 on wifi. The other day a friend came along with his laptop pc and wanted to share the internet connection. So this is what i did with strange results, i put the iMac on wifi and took its Ethernet cable and plugged it on my friends laptop. After a few minutes all computers had lost their connection with the router! To fix this i had to reset the router!
What did i do wrong, is it a matter of ip conflict? And how can i fix this so when one comes along with his computer i can share the internet with him without issues!

 

[Bruno09]

i put the iMac on wifi and took its Ethernet cable and plugged it on my friends laptop.

Why didn't you connect your friend's laptop to your wifi network ?

 

[zoran]

Why didn't you connect your friend's laptop to your wifi network ?

Its an old laptop with no wifi ability

 

[Quad5Ny]

Buy a USB Wifi dongle. You can find them for under $10 on Amazon.

 

[zoran]

Buy a USB Wifi dongle. You can find them for under $10 on Amazon.

Why buy something when i can fix this without it?

 

[Weaselboy]

There are 4 Apple computers (iMac, MacMini, MBPro and a PowerBook) all in a home network, 2 wired Ethernet (iMac, MacMini) connected and 2 on wifi. The other day a friend came along with his laptop pc and wanted to share the internet connection. So this is what i did with strange results, i put the iMac on wifi and took its Ethernet cable and plugged it on my friends laptop. After a few minutes all computers had lost their connection with the router! To fix this i had to reset the router!
What did i do wrong, is it a matter of ip conflict? And how can i fix this so when one comes along with his computer i can share the internet with him without issues!

You would need to go to Network prefs and put wifi at the top of the list is "set service order" under the little cog at the bottom to make sure your iMac is using wifi for the Internet connection. After that go to the sharing pane and set it up to share the wifi connection over ethernet. Is that what you did?

 

[zoran]

You would need to go to Network prefs and put wifi at the top of the list is "set service order" under the little cog at the bottom to make sure your iMac is using wifi for the Internet connection. After that go to the sharing pane and set it up to share the wifi connection over ethernet. Is that what you did?

No i didn't do anything like that. I just activated Airport for the iMac and at the same time disconnected the Ethernet cable it was using and used it for the laptop pc.
Im just wondering, is it safe to set specific ips for each computer that participates on the network?

 

[Weaselboy]

No i didn't do anything like that. I just activated Airport for the iMac and at the same time disconnected the Ethernet cable it was using and used it for the laptop pc.
Im just wondering, is it safe to set specific ips for each computer that participates on the network?

You will need to follow the steps I outlined for it to work. If you just connect the ethernet cables all that does is allow communication between the two machines and not to the Internet.

Yes you can assign a fixed IP if you want. It won't harm anything.

 

[Alrescha]

What did i do wrong, is it a matter of ip conflict? And how can i fix this so when one comes along with his computer i can share the internet with him without issues!

From your description, you took the Ethernet cable that was plugged into your iMac and plugged it into your friend's laptop. It does not look like you did anything wrong. The symptoms you describe could happen if his laptop had a fixed IP address that was the same as your router. Not being there, it is hard to know for certain.

If you start assigning fixed IP addresses to everything, then you will have to keep track of them to prevent IP address conflicts. I used to do this, but with an all-Mac household it is not necessary.

A.

 

[zoran]

I used to do this, but with an all-Mac household it is not necessary.

Interesting, makes me think about changing the content of this thread to "what is needed to be done in ip settings, in an all mac household so that there are no issues". I mean what would be the optimum ip settings for each machine so that all would work flawlessly? In the all mac household i want to add in a pc with windows xp just to be safe when my friend comes along.

 

[Alrescha]

If everything uses DHCP you should not have any problems. All-Mac household or not.

(my earlier mention of 'all-Mac' was referring to convenience. If you have nothing but Apple devices, you pretty much never need to know what their IP addresses are)