Okay, let me walk you through what I did with this whole ‘ip16’ thing I was tinkering with recently.
So, the situation was pretty straightforward. I had this one gadget on my home network, you know, one of those smart home things, and it kept grabbing a different IP address every time it rebooted or the router had a hiccup. Made it a real pain to connect to reliably. I decided I needed to pin it down to a static IP address, something easy to remember. I just picked x.x.x.16, kind of arbitrary, but ’16’ sounded good enough for this device.
Getting Started
First thing first, I had to figure out the device’s current IP address and, more importantly, its MAC address. That’s like its unique fingerprint on the network. I poked around the device’s own app settings first, but no luck there, typical. So, I logged into my router’s admin page. Took me a minute to remember the login password, always does.
Once I was in the router interface – which, let’s be honest, looks like something from the dark ages – I hunted down the list of currently connected devices. Found the gadget in the list, thankfully it had a recognizable name. I scribbled down its current IP (which was gonna change anyway) and its MAC address. Gotcha.
Making the Change
Next step was finding where to actually set the static IP, or sometimes they call it DHCP reservation. Every router hides this differently. Mine tucked it away under ‘LAN Settings’ or something equally vague. Took a few clicks exploring menus that didn’t look promising.
Finally found the right screen. It had a table for reservations. Usually, you need two things:
- The MAC address of the device.
- The IP address you want to give it.
I carefully typed in the MAC address I noted down earlier. Double-checked it because messing that up means it won’t work. Then, in the IP address field, I put in the address I wanted: x.x.x.16. Added a little description like “Smart Gadget” so I’d remember what it was later.
Hit ‘Apply’ or ‘Save’. My router then insisted on rebooting itself, which took a couple of minutes. Always makes me a bit nervous, hoping it comes back online properly.
Checking the Result
After the router finished its little reboot dance, I went to the smart gadget. I restarted it too, just to force it to ask for an IP address again. Waited for it to connect back to the network.
Then, the moment of truth. Went back into the router’s admin page, checked the connected devices list again. And there it was! The smart gadget was listed, and its IP address was now solidly showing as x.x.x.16. Success!
So yeah, that was my little project. Just getting a device locked to that ‘.16’ address. It wasn’t rocket science, but involved the usual navigating messy menus and remembering obscure details. Now, at least, that particular gadget is always where I expect it to be on the network. Makes life just a tiny bit easier.