How to change your IP Address from Static to Dynamic

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/07/how-to-change-your-ip-address.html

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Sorry bro - This is the worst tutorial on the face of the earth.

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Yep, six minutes of floating bullshit for what, two nuggets of information? That D-Link’s default password is blank and that he already had a dynamic address (btw, “dynamic” does not always mean that is changes on every reconnect)?

Or are you trolling us?

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Cosmo cover blurbs for the nerd in your life…

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What is the benefit of changing from static to dynamic?

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Genius - the writers of Mr. Robot should take note of the subtleties in this vid. It will surely resonate with the true underground for Season 3.

Ahem.

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I love you, @beschizza and all the wonders you bring us.

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Generally:
On the client end: If the server re-assigns your IP address to another device, then sharing the IP address can cause both computers headaches. If you ask to have the address assigned dynamically, then if another device steals your preferred IP address, you can just get a new one assigned, and all of the traffic destined for your device should find their way there.

On the server end: If you have more devices than you have available addresses, but not all of them are in use at once, then you can re-shuffle the addresses so that only an active device has an address, and avoid the same problem that you’d have on the client end with two devices trying to share an address.

The disadvantage is that if you’re running a server, it can cause problems with DNS to have an address that changes frequently. But for a client device, having a dynamic address generally isn’t going to cause many issues.

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You usually have to pay extra for a static address on the Internet. Also, less configuration for a dynamic address, since almost everything is configured to use dynamic addresses out of the box.

Most “normal” people aren’t interested in dynamic IPs as a network management tool; instead, they are looking at dynamic IPs from their ISP as a means of obscuring network traffic. Basically if your IP address changes on each connection, it makes it much more difficult to corroborate the computers tents of your traffic from session to session.

Of course it isn’t nearly as reliable as people think, since the ISP has records, and any surveillance orr court orders would go through them (at least in Canada, anyway).

It is a common enough feature that most ISPs charge extra for it as a “service”. (I may be wrong about this!)

I am pretty sure that anything you can do on your routers firmware only affects your local subnet, which as noted above, are usually dynamic by default.

Generally, everyone interested in privacy should just get a VPN and don’t sweat the IP addresses.

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People really believe that?

“Oh, this IP address from [Insert ISP] is doing [these activities]!”

[Next day]

“Oh, this different IP address from [Same ISP] is doing [same activities]!”

“These must be completely different people!”

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Aye. Aye.

I’ll ruin the fun for y’all - this was posted humorously.

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Furry Beschizzle Troll Image by Kredri. Used without permission.

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There is essentially no benefit to having a dynamic IP address. In fact, nearly all the annoying and pointless problems you can have with an IP address stem primarily from it not being static. Basically, dynamic IP addresses were mostly invented by ISPs as a way to be cheapskates and also to hassle people who want to run a server at home. The practice has since expanded dramatically and all sorts of nonsense reasons have appeared for why people might think they want it.

In a perfect world, like for example the magical world of unicorns and IPv6 we’re often promised, every IP address could just be static, and furthermore there would be no reason that each device couldn’t have its very own functional IP address.

Essentially the only reasons anyone claims to want a dynamic IP (other than ISPs trying to be assholes) is to make themselves marginally harder to trace online. The thinking goes that somehow the ISP won’t have a log file for who used what IP address when, so they’ll just shrug when the FBI subpoenas them. In the actual video linked in this article, the description explicitly mentions using this as a way to try to evade bans in online games – since by changing your IP, someone else would end up banned instead of you.

Oh, and some people don’t know the difference between a firewall and network address translation, so they imagine that there’s some sort of important security principle involved in having broken IP addresses that change all the time.

I gave it 30 seconds and nothing happened

8 Sizzling Ways to change your IP Address from Static to Dynamic

I think they always have a number in them

It was horrible, the only nugget of info was changing your mac address. This will change your ip address as your ISP was giving you a DHCP lease to the mac address that probably didn’t change.

But that will give you a new ip address that one time you changed mac addresses and likely you would have to power cycle your cable modem. In my case with Time Warner it will just ignore you until the modem is power cycled. (This tutorial seems to assume both are the same piece of equipment)

Really this tutorial was made by probably a 13 year old that has some really basic knowledge.