Hi All. The IP address of my My Book Live keeps changing for some reason (using a Netgear Network switch with other devices connected, including WD My TV Live) and this means I can’t connect to the Dashboard facility from my PC desktop. My WD My TV Live suffers from the same problem and my WD remote iPad app doesn’t work unless I tell the App what its new IP address is. I can find the latest IP address for my My Book Live from my PC Network page and I can access the Dashbord by altering the IP address that way, but it’s a pain. In settings I think I can change the device to have a static IP address but will this fix the problem? Also the setting page asks for a “Netmask”. What is this and where can I get it from. Thanks.
Do you not have a router managing your IP space via DHCP?
The mask will be whatever you’ve defined in your router for your home network.
Often, but not necessarily, it’s 255.255.255.0.
What IP addresses are you seeing on your devices? Are they 169.254.x.x?
AFAIK WD UI Setting give us an option to determine a static IP for the MBL.
In my experience a router static IP is much more reliable than the MBL UI Setting, I am desperately experience the power down at my home several time per day :angry:
My system are :
- WD MBL 3TB
- Aztech DSL605EW
So the solution is, determine the local static IP via the router setting
Below is the screenshot of my router local static IP setting page
All I do after my router detected all the devices connected, is only tick/ untick the left side box
Hi Tony. Thnaks for replying. I’m a beginner for a lot of this stuff and I don’t understrand your questions. I have a router but how do I find out if it’s managing my IP space and what is DHCP. I don’t believe I have assigned any mask for my network, I don’t know what a mask is. How do I do this. The IP address is 192.168.1.XX, the XX bit seems to change regularly and that is why the Dashboard won’t open because it can’t find the device. It is this that I am trying to make static but I may be barking up the wrong tree on the solution to the problem here. Sorry to be dull on this one.
In your case, your mask will very likely be 255.255.255.0
But you need to get very familiar with your router – you can make things much worse if you try to set devices to use Static IP addresses when your router is trying to do it dynamically – it can cause conflicts.
But that being said, your My Book Live’s IP address should not be changing regularly – or at all.
As long as it’s powered up, it should keep the same address.
So something may be wrong with your router if it’s just changing the MBL’s address willy-nilly…
OK I’ll try and investigate what is going on with my router. I have MBL connected to a Netgear network switch unit which is connected directly to the router. On this switch I have a WD Live TV media player and this too regularly changes its IP address. I also have a sky box and blu ray player attached to the switch. Is this swicth in anyway changing the IP addresses of the devices attached to it. Thanks.
No, a switch won’t do that.
The way DHCP works (the dynamic host configuration protocol, which is assigning the IPs), your router is assigning an IP address to any device that asks.
The reservations is called a “lease.”
At the half-way point to the lease expiration, the device renews the lease, and will continue using the same address as long as the lease is renewed.
I have no way of knowing, but it simply sounds like your router isn’t renewing leases correctly.
Keep in mind, though, that if you power devices completely down (such that they’re not on the network anymore) and the lease actually expires, then the next time it asks for an IP address, it is possible that the address will change.
Depending how much you want to learn about IP Address reservations on a router, you can set your MBL and all other devices to their own static addresses. For instance:
Your PC: static to 192.xxx.xxx.2
Your smartphone: 192.xxx.xxx.3
Your partners tablet: 192.xxx.xxx.4
Your MBL: 192.xxx.xxx.5
And so on…
This is done when you access your router via a web browser on your computer, and that is usually defaulted to 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
Most routers these days make the process easy because they will have an option for you to see what devices are connected and also the name of the device. The only device I have seen which doesn’t publish it’s name is a Playstation 3 but there may be others. PC, Laptops, smartphones, tablets and the MBL do so you can see which is which on the router easily.
So when you have set up static addresses for each of your devices in your house they will always get that address from that router, provided you leave all of them as factory default on the actual device.
Thanks. I did go into the router and managed to set a static address for MBL and TV Live. All good. However now when I want to viiew some pdf files from MBL on my iPad, these take an age to download. Music files from the same MBL to my digital music player is not affected ???
