router problem

[sitlet]

ive had a netgear wireless g router for over a year now. my desktop is hooked via a cable to the router, and my laptop is the wireless on it. i have a bunch of ports forwarded for a bunch of programs and servers i run. my laptop always had the ip 192.168.0.3. but recently, my dad got this video phone and plugged it into the second port on the back. that wasnt a problem as the router assigned it to 192.168.0.4. but last week, my dad bought a wireless laptop and a new palm cell phone with wifi built in. because of these new items, my ip keeps changing. so everyday i have to go into the router and change all my forwarded ports to my new ip, which sometimes is 3, 4, or 5. im pretty sure this is happening because his laptop is also used with his work network, and his phone isnt always connected to the router, only when he switches in on.

so theres no way to stop him from using these 2 devices. so is there a way to make my laptop always a certain ip on my network? ive looked through every page on the router managment, and could not find anything.

[GKar]

My router lets me disable DHCP and use fixed mapping by MAC address and assign ip's. But I think you'll have to assign each mac address individually when you diasble DHCP.

[CrayonEater]

All you HAVE to do is assign yourself a static IP address from your Network Connections panel. You laptop will be 192.168.0.3, the netmask will be 255.255.255.0, and the gateway will be 192.168.0.1. Statically assign your other devices to other 192.168.0.x addresses as well. It's helpful to manually assign DNS servers if you do this, especially since Netgear products tend to slow down DNS lookups anyway. You should disable your DHCP server but it's not required; most Netgear and other routers will allow you to limit the assignable range via DHCP, so your dad can continue to use his laptop and phone without needing to assign static addresses to his equipment. Just make sure the assignable range you pick does not conflict with the intended IP addresses you will be assigning to your stuff.

[Nelson37]

If you are forwarding ports then you want to use a fixed address on the PC to which the ports are forwarded, DHCP introduces a variable which is not needed or wanted.

No need to change router settings, simply use a static IP on the PC in question instead of "Obtain automatically". Just make sure it is within the range of assignable addresses and does not conflict with other PC's. If you continue to use DHCP for the other PC's, then assign an address significantly higher to the port forwarded PC to avoid conflict. Example, 192.168.0.30.

Except on large networks, I always use Static IP on all PC's. It eliminates one thing that can go wrong (DHCP) and with only two or three units on the network DHCP provides no real benefit.