Linksys Router - LAN Ports, Help?

[Aeonxal]

Hello, I have Linksys Wireless Router, I've always been wondering generally about all the functionality that routers offer and have many times heard people asking, why don't you use static IP as you have router and was wondering what they mean exactly, so It has a WAN port for internet, then 4 other LAN ports and if I understand correctly, those 4 lan ports are used as a switch, nothing special? I'm really confused, could someone please explain me all it's functionalities and in regards to that static IP thing? Thank you so much!

 

[kaleem104]

Your router has something called a DHCP server running on it, it automatically assigns IP addresses all devices connected on to it. However with DHCP server does not "guarantee" that all devices will have the same IP address every time. The assigned addresses are all numerically incremented, and given out on a first come first server.

This works great, with one exception if you use to use a particular device as "server" for hosting any kind of service inside your network. With a server, other device will look specifically for it and makes it very difficult to be found if its address changes. The solution for this is to use a "static" IP address that will not change, but the static IP address must be manually assigned so the person configuring it needs to know a little bit about the network address range, subnet mask, default gateway, etc... if you put in random numbers in place of static IP address it will not work.

You don't need static IP's on a day to day basis unless you are doing something specific. For example I have a static IP address on my home computer, and a port forwarding rule on my router for any connections on port 3389 to be forwarded to it. The resulting effect of this, I can send a remote connection request to my home IP address and it forwards it to my computer and I can remotely log into my computer from work or my phone without the need for any third party applications like teamviewer, logimein, etc...

PS: The "LAN" ports on your router are just switch ports as you already knew. They are amazing for connectivity compared to wireless. Only hassle is you have to run a cable.