[mythtv-users] first build, $695 - extra eyes, please

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 05 June 2009 13:53:52 Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> says:
> > It can't be that hard to have the HDHR accept a static IP, but I
> > suppose the target market is Mac and Windows users, which have no
> > idea what an IP is.
> >
> > It's not a major problem, just an annoyance for those of us who like
> > as much control as possible over our networks.
>
> I stated in my earlier message that I a) use static IPs via the Tomato
> firmware on my WRT54G router and b) the HDHomeRun has one, if only
> because every device on my network (down to the two Xboxes) does.
>
I wouldn't call that a "static" IP, it's still DHCP as far as the machine 
getting the IP is concerned, it was still assigned by the DHCP server.

Static means the interface has a definite IP that will work without a DHCP 
server. Setting up the DHCP server to always assign the same IP to a given 
MAC still means that machine can't speak to the network without the DHCP 
server running on the net.

I'm not sure what would happen if the IP you have assigned to a given MAC is 
the only address available in the pool when a different MAC requests an 
address. Would it refuse to give any address at all, or would it go ahead and 
assign the one that the first MAC was supposed to get, and what would then 
happen when the first machine comes up (assuming an address has been freed 
up, would it then be assigned "incorrectly")?

Since I don't like mysteries, I assign any machine that's always on my net a 
real static IP, using DHCP for transient machines like notebooks or guests. I 
can then assign different firewall rules to addresses in the DHCP pool, so 
guests are restricted in what they can access.

> What I don't understand is the assertion that the HDHomeRun benefits
> from having one, as both mythtv-setup and hdhomerun_config use a
> unique identifier to locate HDHomeRuns on the network, as opposed to
> using an IP address or hostname. Are there other applications that use
> the latter?

Not that I'm aware of, but you never know.

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org