Static IP address Linksys Wireless Router.

How do I staticlly assign an IP address to My Windows XP box and my Linux Box? And then poke holes in the firewall (on my linksys wireless router with 4 port switch) so I can get to them?

Thanks,

In windows its easy enough, just click start >> connect to >> show all connections >> Right click your LAN connection and click properties.
Then select TCP/IP and click properties, then you select 'use the following IP address' and type whatever address you want.

In linux, login or su to root, and then type this assuming you want to change eth0 to 192.168.10.1

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 192.168.10.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
ifconfig eth0 up

otherwise depending on your distribution there will be a gui tool.. if you're running Redhat, run redhat-config-network. You can also edit it in
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1

I dont know what you mean about having to poke holes in your firewall to access them.. what do you need to access on them and from where ? If you want to access them from over the internet you will need a public IP address or do some snazzy NAT work with the router.

I'm just using VNC.

Right now I set the forwarding port to my box's internal IP address, and the port that VNC runs on. But the problem I'm having because of DHCP is that sometimes it reassigns the address of the computer and then the packets are not forwared to the IP address my computer is currently at. So I figured why not just set the IP to something static. But the problem is that when I try to set the forwarding, I can only set it to addresses that begin with 192.168.1.*, and those are reserved for DHCP right?

To add a static address is pretty easy.
I don't have an XP running at the moment, but I can show you how it is done on my W2K machine. W2K would be the similar (as would the MAC BTW). The screen would just be a tad different.

Here is the snapshop of my linksys firewall. All the linksys boxes look similar.



If you look at the "WAN Connetion Type", this is where you tell linksys that you want to set the IP yourself.

The "LAN IP Address: " is the address of the LAN port on the Linksys router (this will be your gateway on the W2K machine). By convention this is usually 192.168.x.1, where the 1 denotes a gateway router (this could also be 2 if you have multiple devices as gateways). You will notice that the router you are going to is also a x.x.x.1 router ("default gateway address")

Your "Specify WAN IP Address" is the address you ISP gave you (that is not the gateway address, which will usually be the same with a .1 at the end). This is the address of the port that is designated "WAN" on the back of the Linksys router and should be going to your modem.

As I mentioned the "Default Gateway Address:" should be the same as your WAN address, except for the last number which should be a .1.

The DNS numbers should have been given to you by your ISP, also.

Now on your XP side, you should do something like the following:

On my XP I right click the "My Network Places". Then when the screen comes up I should see a "Local Area Connection", that would have been set up when you installed your Network Card. I right click this and get the following screen:



Select the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" entry and press properties or just double click the selection to get the following screen:



At this point you are only dealing with your private addresses and not the addresses that your ISP gave you (except for the DNS entries).

"Obtain an IP address automatically", will probably be checked by default. This is only if you are using Dynamic IPs (DHCP). Since we are talking static, select "Use the following IP address".

The IP Address will be the address you want this machine to be in you LAN. It would be dependant on the addressing scheme you set up. In my case, I have 192.168.122.7 here, another machine would have 192.168.122.9, my printer is 192.168.122.100. It would be similar for you.

The default gateway will be the "LAN IP Address: " you gave your Linksys box above (not the WAN IP address or "Default Gateway Address:" you specified for the Linksys box above).

Then just add in the DNS entries as you did for the Linksys box. Press OK to close the 2 screens and set the entries. You may or may not have to reboot ( I would, even if they say it isn't necessary).

I just noticed that Sahirh has answered part of the questions for you. This will show you how I do it, as you were asking specifically about the Linksys box.

As far as "Poking holes" into your firewall. I also am not sure what you are talking about here. Do you have another device (firewall) that will be between the Linksys router and your modem?

To get through the Linksys box you can use either the DMZ (not recommended as it leaves your whole machine open) or you can use the Port Forwarding option from the Advanced tab to forward all requests that come to your Public address (WAN address) and have a specifice port address (say, 80 for a web server you have set up).

Hope this is what you were looking for.

Just to confirm you dont just have to use 192.168.1.*, and it is not reserved for DHCP. There are no addresses reserved for DHCP.
You can use any of the private IP addresses from RFC 1918. I would suggest you choose something like

192.168.1.1 and .1.2 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 thats a class C private address.

As far as using VNC, yeah you can just use port forwarding, it will work.

Sahirh is correct.

But also, you can use port forwarding, but I don't believe you can use port forwarding and DHCP. At least not with the server/workstation you want to port forward to.

What you would need to do is set the machine (web server, email server, etc) that you want to port forward to and set that machine to use a static address outside of the DHCP range. All your other machines can still use DHCP.

If you think logically what you are doing, this makes sense. You are telling your router, if you see a packet going to the WAN address (the routers WAN address, public address that the ISP assigned to you) and it is going to port that has been assigned as a port forwarding port (say that 3 times fast), then forward this packet to address x (192,168.x.x). If that machine gets assigned a different address from DHCP, that address, assigned in your port forwarding table, will either not be there or may have been reassigned to another server.