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Originally Posted by jlutes
Starson17 - most internal home routers provide DNS so it doesn't matter what IP address (internally) the laptop is at, as long as it is recognized as the same hardware by the router. It's not unusual for the laptops on my network to change IP addresses, especially if they have been away for a while, but when they come back, the router remembers what they are and what services they should get so life is good.
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All the routers I've used require you to specify the IP address when doing port forwarding, which is what you need for external access to the Calibre content server. If the laptop IP address changes, the port forwarding breaks. Because he said his laptop address had changed (and he was using ipconfig to check the laptop address) he'll have that problem.
It's true that some routers will try to reassign the same IP to each MAC address, but because as you say "It's not unusual for the laptops on [the] network to change IP addresses, especially if they have been away for a while" - unless you ensure that this does not happen, the changed IP will break the port forwarding.
There are two good solutions for that. Either a static IP, or tell the router to always assign the same IP to the MAC of the laptop. Either way requires that the laptop's IP
not change.
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That said, it it's a permanent member of the network then it won't hurt anything to set it with a static IP address...
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I actually prefer telling the router to identify the laptop by MAC and always assign the same IP. That way you can take your laptop to other locations without fiddling with the network settings, but the only way for that to work reliably is to set the router to recognize the laptop's MAC. It's not hard, provided the router supports that function.