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Reserving the Camera’s IP Address
Some routers tend to remember and keep the camera’s IP address as it was
the first time you plugged it in.
However, many current generation routers tend to re-assign all IP addresses
every time the router or a camera or computer is restarted. Aside from the
inconvenience of having to find the camera’s current IP address again, this can
also interfere with some of the other setup steps.
Therefore it is important to check if your router has an address reservation
menu, sometimes also called “DHCP reservation” or “Static DHCP”.
On NetGear
routers you click on the “LAN setup” menu on the left under the
“Advanced” heading.
Linksys E series
routers tend to have a button for “DHCP
reservation” in the middle of the basic setup screen.
Most routers show you a list of currently attached devices for which you can
reserve the IP address. Typically you just select the device and then click on
“Add” or “Reserve”, which moves the item to the list of reserved addresses.
Then you typically click on “save settings” or “update” to make this choice
permanent, and from now on the camera’s IP address is locked and will not
change even after power failures or restarts.
This allows you to add the camera’s IP address to your browser’s bookmarks
or favorites menu and gives you a convenient way to login to the camera.
On current generation
Apple Airport
routers the address reservation menu is
very different. Please refer to the MAC Quickstart section for details.
On older Apple Airport routers, older Linksys routers such as WRT-54G, and
some of the freebie routers provided by the DSL internet companies such as
ATT and Verizon, there is unfortunately no address reservation menu.
In that case, the IP address needs to be set up in the camera as shown in the
chapter titled “Manual Setup Step 1: Assigning a Permanent IP Address for
your Camera”.
To summarize:
If you can find your router’s address reservation menu, you
should use it now to lock the camera’s IP address in the router. If you cannot
find your router’s address reservation menu, you would set up the camera’s
IP address manually, but do not try both methods at the same time.
