So I’ve been on this forum for about a year and half and I notice the one problem more than anything else is connectivity; some users just can’t keep connected despite assigning a static IP.
I know this to be true: Once you have your WD Cloud setup, the device remains connected for as long as your router, internet and cloud remains on and up. I’ve noticed on my Shaw Cisco Router that when the internet is down it reboots itself every minute thus rendering my home network useless for movie streaming or music. However with that said, there should not be an outage when used normally.
Long story short
If you do lose your cloud every couple of days and rebooting the cloud device brings it back, that means your router is dropping the IP due to the Cloud not renewing it. This is the problem when your Cloud thinks it has a static IP because you filled out the Static IP form and the router thinks it is a Dynamic IP because your pre-defined it (pre-define, extended lease and reserve is still a DHCP IP function (leave your Cloud on DHCP)).
Careful on your Static IP
There are multiple threads in this forums on assigning static IPs on the WD Cloud itself so I won’t go into how to set up a static IP, however do be careful on assigning it correctly as some people has locked themselves out of their WD completely by assigning an unknown IP despite the fact that WD says that a reset will reset the device back to DHCP default. If you are in this situation, you will have to keep trying to do a proper 40 second reset; pat your tummy, rub your head and sing the wd song.
The IP Thingy - call me maybe
One of the things that the Cloud software will attempt to shield you from is the IP. When you access your Cloud device on the network, you can use the network name of //WDMyCloud; the only thing that I can see that will relate a name back to an IP is the DNS service on your WD, so if it doesn’t recognize the name, try again in a few minutes after the service updates itself, if not try the known IP of your WD of which you can find the ip in the logs in your router.
Every single device you have your local network (LAN) which consist of your computer, ipad, iphone, WD cloud has an IP. The default IP’s within your home should consist of 192.168.0.xxx. 192.168.0.1 which is your router IP and the xxx is not the address of a **bleep** site but a number that ranges from probably 10 to 240.
You can think of these IP’s as your device phone numbers; so without an ip you cannot access that device abd every device must have a unique ID.
DHCP
DHCP is just a program that allows any device to ask for an IP. Of course depending on the order of your devices being turned on you might get a different IP everytime. Thus your printer may get an ip of 192.168.0.15 and next time your iPad gets the ip of 192.168.0.15. Can you imagine that when you phone your girlfriend, a different guy/girl answers everytime? This is the main reason that you should assign a static IP.
Now a dynamic IP has a renewal date on it. You can set the time for renewal in your router setup menu. I think the longest is a week before it expires. If you cloud doesn’t renew by this date, the router expires the IP and your device goes offline.
Rebooting your router doesn’t re-assign an IP to all your devices. Your devices must issue a refresh/renew on the ip in order for it continue to work. If you have set your device to DHCP, this is automatic. If you have set your device to a Static IP, the router won’t know that you are using this static until your device uses it.
Unsync Dates
This is the reason that your dates must also be synchronized otherwise unsync dates may mean the ip doesn’t get renewed on time. Thus if you cloud date is set back to 2014 and the IP date says it doesn’t expire until mm/dd/2015, you have a whole year to renew; meanwhile your router already expired you IP and your device is now offline.
DNS - Matching IP and Names
DNS is an abbreviation for Domain Name System is a service that maps names to IP addresses. Thus if your Girlfriend name is Bella and everytime you call Bella, the DNS server will translate Bella.com to the latest or last IP address that it had. Of course for the Internet you have to buy the Domain name bella.com and registered it to a fixed IP in order to resolve the name to an ip.
For lans, local network there is one service running on your WD that will attempt at matching a name like smb://WDMyCloud to an IP, but because we don’t know where the WD device is anyways we might not get the name match with the IP.
So for most users, this is where you lose your WD. Giving your WD Cloud a fix IP address will resolve the problem of having to find bella, I mean //WDMyCloud.
Fix IP - a permanent IP address
There is actually two ways to do this, one is safer and easier then the other.
DO NOT DO BOTH
Assigning a Fix IP using Reserve or Pre-assign or extended lease
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boot up with the default DHCP
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go to your router menu by typing 192.168.0.1 at your web browser url. If you don’t know about your router settings, google it as this post only allows me to type up 4000 chars.
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first step is to look up your mac address and current IP. You should have a connected Devices Summary or log of devices currently assigned a DHCP. Find your WDCloud Mac address which consist of 6 sets of 2 character alphanumeric like 00:2f:03:4a:2e:1a
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Under Lan setup you may or may not find Pre-assigned DHCP IP address or reserve DHCP IP address or extended lease. If you don’t find it then just go to assign a fix IP manually. If you do have that option this allows DHCP to assign a reserved or fixed IP number. You can assign the existing assigned DHCP IP number or any number you like. _ BUT REMEMBER THE CLOUD WILL STILL NEED TO USE DHCP but it will receive the same IP everytime. _
Assigning a Fix IP Manually (Outside the range of the DHCP IP)
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go to your router menu by typing 192.168.0.1 at your web browser url.
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go to your DHCP Server where you can type in the starting IP address and the maximum Number of DHCP Users. so lets say
Starting IP Address: 192.168.0.10
Max Num: 50
- Now you can assign WD Cloud a FIX ip number on the Cloud Fix IP menu (search on the forum on how to do this). Just make sure your assigned IP is outside the range of the DHCP server numbers; such as 192.168.0.100
Firmware Issues
I’ve been looking for it to be firmware related as I’m still on firmware 3.04 and wish to update to the latest firmware at some point in time. So far, despite seeing on the connectivity issues, I still believe that the problem has to do with the above (pre-assigned IP versus static IP), rather then a bug in firmware 4.xx.
Unless someone specifically tells me and it is from a reliable source (i.e. you are not a rookie that is on WIFI and getting dropped signals) then I would consider this one issue with FW4.xx closed.
The other two FW problems
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USB connectivity (remember to boot and wait 5 minutes before connecting USB)
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SMB speeds? slower than 3.04? faster then 4.x? which one is it?
So if you went TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) or TLAK (Too Long Already Know)
Here is what has been happening with everyon and their static IP that didn’t work.
They assigned a pre-assigned/reserved IP to a MAC address on the router and they also assigned the same static IP manually on the Cloud. Thus WD Cloud thinks it has a static IP and doesn’t renew the IP. and the router thinks it dynamic and the cloud hasn’t renewed, then drops it.
Although it may seem that I write this post selflessly, I would like to be rewarded with kudos (by clicking on the star) if this post helps you in any way. At one point in time I believed that if I collected a 1000 kudos I might be able to redeem it with WD for another Cloud drive; but this is unfortunately not true.
I couldn’t have my first post as a solution, could I? but yours is just as good. Good job cpt_paranoia. 