Local Mac's IP Changing

[Whits]

I came into an office that had absolutely no networking. They were constantly sharing files through flash drives back and forth. I partitioned my work iMac's drive so that there was space allocated for a shared drive.

In order to share files I have them connect to my local IP, 192.168.1.105. The problem is that the last number (105) is is changing every once in a while. Can I stop this from changing so they don't need to check my computer's IP in order to connect.

Also, is there a better way to have a simple network set up with a shared folder- or is this ok?

Thanks

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

You may want to try to
manually assign the IP in network preferences. This may cause other issues though. The IP address is probably getting reassigned from time to time due to the router being restarted and assigning IPs at random.

 

[26139]

Networking

Did you have someone set up your network?

Fixed IPs need to be assigned to each computer on the network. This will allow you to share files without having to re-set up things often.

 

[Whits]

Did you have someone set up your network?

Fixed IPs need to be assigned to each computer on the network. This will allow you to share files without having to re-set up things often.

I just set them up so they could share a drive that is local on my computer, then gave them my local IP address to connect to it using my username and password. Probably about as basic as it gets...

So I am guessing what I would want to do is change the Configure IP setting to "DHCP with a manual address" on everyone's computer, then manually give them an IP?

 

[26139]

Yep

Yep. You'll have to re-enter the subnet mask and router too, but they are usually 255.255.255.0 and 192.168.x.1, respectively.

Just write down the numbers that are there now and re-enter them.

Or you could give them an IP address out of range of the existing DHCP server, like 192.168.1.99. That way visitors can still attach to your network without knowing any more than the user name and password.

 

[Whits]

Great. Thanks for the help!

 

[Consultant]

I just set them up so they could share a drive that is local on my computer, then gave them my local IP address to connect to it using my username and password. Probably about as basic as it gets...

So I am guessing what I would want to do is change the Configure IP setting to "DHCP with a manual address" on everyone's computer, then manually give them an IP?

That will work, but if you move the computer to a network with different IP range, then you will have to change your setting.

The more elegant solution is to set it up at your router.

Use your router to assign an IP based on your computer's MAC address (your network device's finger print). Something like this, although some people claim it cannot be done on your specific router, but I think it's basic functionality and I never seen a router without that option.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/392525.html

OSX can read other computers on the local network without the need for IP. I guess other computers on your network don't have that ability?