Static vs DHCP

[Its_a_secret]

Which option suits which circumstances?

Currently I am using DHCP - but I sometimes find that connection drops out to my My Cloud (especially when I connect my second network)

would the static configuration correct this?

Not sure what each option is designed for - so I’m not sure which option would suit me better?

How have you decided which option to use in your configuration?

Thanks everyone

[cat0w]

Static is so your address number never changes to your My Cloud. Depending on your router you may be able to reserve the address your My Cloud has under DHCP. This does the same thing the IP address never changes. See example image of mine below. Click on image to enlarge it

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cat0w
USA

[larryg0]

in my opinion any shared network resource, printers, NAS etc should have a static IP so the resource can always be located at the same location. In Windows ad hoc (home) networks name resolution is not always reliable.

For PC’s, phones, tablets DHCP is generally fine

[Joerg_A]

Mostly all consumer routers will have problems with Static IP addresses and DNS resolution. DNS resolution is needed to translate names into IP addresses, like “WDMyCloudMirror” into 192.168.0.21

Add-on: This is related to Static IP configuration setup on the client with no interaction on the DNS server or personal router side.

Best practise for having an IP address that will never change (again) is using the feature called “Static lease” or whatever. You can find this somewhere close to the DHCP-Server in your router, this feature will bind assigned DHCP-IP-address to MAC address. In the end, this MAC address will always get the identical DHCP-IP-address (unless you reset your router).

Why? Static IP addresses has to be set outside of the DHCP IP address range of your DHCP-Server, otherwise it may cause conflicts. But most routers then will not do a proper DNS resolution for these IP addresses as they are outside of their own pool. Next conflict or problem will happen, up to “hostname not found” or "cannot connect to “\\servername”.

Using Static Lease with DHCP, you solve all your problems at once, having static aka unchanged IP addresses for your devices and the security that DNS resolution is working. You need a proper DNS resolution for the cloud features all the time.

[cpt_paranoia]

DHCP is really intended for a large network, where devices come and go regularly.

In a typical home environment, that’s not so likely, and especially not for fixed infrastructure like a NAS.

The approach I take is to leave all devices on DHCP, and let the DHCP server in my router allocate them an IP address within the DHCP address range, but, once allocated, I use the router’s control panel to set an ‘infinite timeout’ for this IP; it means that the DHCP-allocated IP address will always be allocated to that device, and should never change. Different routers might use a different name for this, e.g. ‘always use this address’ is the same thing. [edit: Joerg_A’s ‘static lease’ is the same thing]

This saves me having to look up all the information required by the MyCloud Static IP dialogue (which should be available using ipconfig, I think). I’m a bit lazy…

Some would argue that this reduces the range of available IP address for DHCP, but I don’t need that many IP addresses in a home network. If I were running a public-accessed network (e,g, a pub, bar or restaurant), I might think a bit harder about it.

Setting the IP address to static at the router should also work, provided the DHCP server is smart enough to know that when a client device requests a DHCP address (e.g. leave the MyCloud as DHCP), it recognises that the requesting MAC address is allocated a static IP address, and returns that address in the DHCP IP transaction.

[Morden2004]

In my network (and most other nets I set up) I always use static IP’s in the range 100-253 for the normally resident units and I set DHCP range to 10-99 thereby allowing wireless visitors an IP in that range. I find that this works well.