Hi Phil
Funnily enough, in the N5 settings is that option! I did think about it, but bottled it!
I have though, on the Sky Hub, given the Bartók and the N5, their own static IP.
Last night I accessed the N5 on Safari Browser flawlessly for a couple of hours, then again early this morning. Then at 11am back to square one!
I have spent the last 1.5 hours on the phone to sky Tech, in ‘India’ and got absolutely nowhere. They did all the tests on the Hub and say it’s working correctly. This would have more useful if we both could have understood each others accents!
Most bits of kit give the option of setting a static IP address and if you do know what you’re doing then there is no problem doing so …
… but what typically tends to happen is that you’ll get someone sets a static address on their bit of kit - say 192.168.0.150 - and then several years later they change their ISP and the new router uses 192.168.1.x as it’s default DHCP range which results in the unit no longer being visible on the network and to change it you have to either hope that the unit itself has a network reset option, that you still have the old router available that you can substitute back in to be able to go and change the settings on the unit or you need to manually set an IP address on your computer on the old network range and then use that to change the settings.
Phil your example is surely a possibility but not something that most individuals will encounter. When I decide to switch wifi routers the first thing I will do is go in and un-reserve my only two fixed IP addresses. Those being my dCS Upsampler and my SGC i5 where Roon resides. I have had those devices allocated for about 8 years now and my Roon set-up is rock solid.
I scratch my head looking at the Roon community board seeing all the problems users encounter and complain about. The only time I have had to cycle my router, Upsampler, and Roon device is the rare occasion I have a “odd” power outage. My whole house back-up generator handles most power losses within seconds.
In your example that is reserving a DHCP address though, not setting a static IP address on a piece of kit directly, and if you are switching routers then you don’t need to “unreserve” the IP address on your old router before switching them over as your devices are still set to DHCP so they’ll just get a new IP address from the new router.
It’s if you set a static IP address on your kit itself, don’t set them back to DHCP (or you don’t set a new static IP address that works with the new router) before switching routers and the new router uses a different DHCP range that problems can then occur.
If you understand what is going on (or the kit has a network reset menu that is accessible without network access) then that’s fine and you can get out of it but to most people networking is still seen as something of a black art and frequently settings are made / changed without really understanding what they are for.
One that is frequently changed erroneously is the “Enable UPnP” setting on a router … very frequently people will turn that setting on on a router because they have a UPnP server and they want to use the UPnP server as a source on their network and for this use UPnP is absolutely “safe” but this setting on a router usually enables devices or applications running on your local network to do things like opening ports on the router to the outside world which can be a security risk if you happen to run some malicious code.
If it’s something that you have set on the router then that is a RESERVED IP address - not a static IP address. You have reserved the same address on the router to be given out to a specific device and that device only.
A static IP address is set on the device itself, not the router.
Moving on…I managed to speak to ‘Alan’ for about 1.5 hours today. A very clever, knowledgeable man.
He inferred, that having a reserved IP address and also having the DHCP ticked on the N5 is not a good idea.
Cut a long story short, I have reset the Sky Hub, and the Reserved IPs have gone.
He firmly puts the blame on the Sky Hub, which is not faulty, but just the way it’s designed, not much different to the BT Router.
The 192.168.0.37 was being used elsewhere, which is why it worked sometimes, other times it didn’t.
He does have a card up his sleeve though, which would solve 99% of network issues.
