Netopia PN Series User Manual

If you choose to manually distribute IP addresses, you must enter 
each computer’s address into its TCP/IP stack software. Once you 
manually issue an address to a computer, it possesses that 
address until you manually remove it. That’s why manually 
distributed addresses are sometimes called static addresses.

Static addresses are useful in cases when you want to make sure 
that a host on your network cannot have its address taken away by 
the address server. A network administrator’s computer, a computer 
dedicated to communicating with the Internet, and routers are 
appropriate candidates for a static address.

The Netopia Router provides two ways to serve IP addresses to 
computers on a network. The first, Dynamic Host Configuration 
Protocol (DHCP), is supported by PCs with Microsoft Windows and a 
TCP/IP stack. Macintosh computers using Open Transport and 
computers using the UNIX operating system may also be able to use 
DHCP. The second way, MacIP, is for Macintosh computers. MacIP is 
provided with the Netopia Internet Software Starter Kit.

The Netopia Router can use both DHCP and MacIP. Whether you use 
one or both will depend on your particular networking environment. 
If that environment includes both PCs and Macintosh computers 
that do not use Open Transport, you will need to use both DHCP and 
MacIP to distribute IP addresses to all of your computers.

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Before you allocate IP addresses using DHCP and MacIP, 
consider whether you need to set aside any static addresses. 

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Note any planned and currently used static addresses before 
you use DHCP and MacIP.