What are the benefits of Static IP addresses?

@ZeroHour and @SimpleSi
From experience it is not the key evidence but is darned helpful to find the relevant information, cutting hours / days / weeks from investigations.

Of course ... if you are sure that every single device which can connect to your network will always be logged and tracked then that is ok ... and I am sure that all networks around the world are set up that way, especially so in schools which are renowned for having a lot of investment in time and money.

As for MAC address spoofing ... yep, and the concerted script kiddie will look at this as an option ... but applying reservations will mean they have to snort a MAC address, identify the machine owner / user / location, ensure that it is not on / connected when they try to connect and that should the device be on then that the accompanying error message will not get dealt with. If they do get on (and this sometimes happens in schools on guest mobile networks ... apparently) then the logs of the APs can show you the approx area where the connection took place, etc ... or if this is not possible (though with all the investment in managed wireless networks which has happened in every single school it would be surprising) then you have at least put a little something in place to be a tiny bit disruptive to the annoying brat trying to get onto your network.

For some it might slow them down by a few hours ... for others it confuses them too much and they drop it.

Or look on label on side of printer and then unplug said printer.

Job done.

Ben

We don't the sort of incident in primaries that requires deep network forensics :)
Si

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Originally Posted by SimpleSi

Another reason to not use AD :lol:
Si
HOME - One workgroup to rule them all :)

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You don't just walk into moordore .....

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Originally Posted by SimpleSi

We don't the sort of incident in primaries that requires deep network forensics :)
Si

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And no primary school teachers are ever investigated for illegal activities?

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And no primary school teachers are ever investigated for illegal activities?

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You don't need ip/mac address correlation to nail them - they aren't that clever :)

Si

I always went by the rule that infrastructure components such as servers, switches, WAPs, printers etc. were static. Workstations and client devices were DHCP.
With static addresses on critical kit monitoring, fault finding and configuration is so much simpler, as opposed to workstations where you don't really need that kind of access as usually you have other systems in place for this.

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Originally Posted by mac_shinobi

When any of you are stating 'you use a dhcp reservation' does that mean

1. You set the dhcp reservation in DHCP via the mac address of said device and then on the actual device you

A - Still program or manually set the ip address info ( ip address, subnet mask, default gateway, dns servers ) statically
B - Leave said device to DHCP as it will pick up the dhcp reservation anyway

2. When Switches, Servers or other devices that need Static IP Addresses I presume you just manually and statically assign them the said network address info ( so IP Address, subnet mask and any other relevant info that you need to assign them )

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Yep, I set the DHCP reservation in the DHCP via the MAC address of the device and then leave the PC to automatic so that it requests an IP address from the server but as there is a reservation the server will always give it the same address.

Switches, servers, printers are set up at the device with manual static IP addresses.

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the replies. Some seem to think its handy but most seem to think its not necessary.

Are there any disadvantages to doing it? All those who said its not necessary on clients never really gave a disadvantage to the set up, merely that it was not needed.

Thanks
K

Our LEA provide different restrictions to some admin computers via IP addressing, so these are static. As are the Canon photocopiers and servers and the CCTV interfaces. When I first came here, everything was static because we had networked Acorns. It was a real pain!

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Originally Posted by KevWCFE

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the replies. Some seem to think its handy but most seem to think its not necessary.

Are there any disadvantages to doing it? All those who said its not necessary on clients never really gave a disadvantage to the set up, merely that it was not needed.

Thanks
K

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The disadvantage on lab machines with a true static IP is the time it would take to do it.

DHCP reservations would be slightly less onerous provided you had a list of the mac addresses for all the machines.

It's what DHCP was created for so why not use it?

Ben

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Originally Posted by plexer

The disadvantage on lab machines with a true static IP is the time it would take to do it.

DHCP reservations would be slightly less onerous provided you had a list of the mac addresses for all the machines.

It's what DHCP was created for so why not use it?

Ben

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Am sure in one of mark russinovich's books for server OS it mentioned something along the lines of 'dhcp is your friend', otherwise you are just creating extra unnecessary work for yourself ( at least imo )

Obviously that is only if used correctly as above with regards to dhcp reservations and if needed / wanted keeping a list of machine mac addresses etc

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Originally Posted by plexer

The disadvantage on lab machines with a true static IP is the time it would take to do it.

DHCP reservations would be slightly less onerous provided you had a list of the mac addresses for all the machines.

It's what DHCP was created for so why not use it?

Ben

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And most folk make a note of the MAC addresses on machines in their Asset Register and CMDB, so it is just another part of your process when setting up a new machine to also configure a reserved address for it too.

Well you won't get me spending my time making reservations for anything that isn't in traditional "static vs reservation" territory: The premise of computers is to make stuff easier, not to provide you with more ways to use people's time performing trained monkey work.

It hasn't yet, but if my "risk analysis" suggested there was a significant chance of needing to map IPs to MACs in some serious investigation then I'd just turn on DHCP logging to record the assignments and their timestamps, and should that ever need mapping to a specific machine/serial just go look in the DB with the *automagic* h/w inventory (via SCCM, Spiceworks, whatever).

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And most folk make a note of the MAC addresses on machines in their Asset Register

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:)
There's one thing for sure - GDs never going to be caught out by any sort of auditor or inspector :)

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ll those who said its not necessary on clients never really gave a disadvantage

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The time to do it!

Si