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Static IP for company server

Trismegister
Member

When we had 5 Static IP addresses I used the BT Business Hub to allocate each server an internet-facing IP address.

 

We moved most of our servers to cloud services and downgraded our BT Business service to a single fixed IP address.

 

At this time I was advised by BT to turn off the "Static IP address" in the BT Business Hub 5 and revert to DHCP and port forwarding to the single remaining internet-facing server. 

 

This works fine; the Mac Server is offering its services to the internet as required ... except ...

 

  1. I cannot ping the server from the internet, only the router. 

  2. Some reachability functionality on the (Mac) Server is not working as I suspect it requires ICMP. This is not a critical issue.

  3. I cannot ping the server from the intranet LAN using its  internet-facing IP address.

Q: Why should I not use the "Static IP Address" setting on the router as I was doing when we had 5 static addresses?

 

Since the Mac Server needs to be available nearly 24/7 I am reluctant to experiment before understanding whether there is a very good reason for not using the router's "Static IUP Address" setting. I have been caught out by some quirks of previous BT Business Hubs. The unintended consequences of network  misconfiguration can be stressful and time-consuming!

2 REPLIES 2

markp
Grand Guru

Hi Trismegister

 

With a single static IP, we auto assign this to the router when it logs into the line and you would port forward to the server, so when you ping the IP you are pinging the router not the server, if you want the server to be assigned an IP directly you would need to go back to a range of IP's and then enable the range in the router and assign one if the IP's to the server.

 

Markp

 

Trismegister
Member
Got it @Markp. Thanks for clarifying.