BT Business Smart Hub 2 Manager won't store "Always use this IP address" as "Yes"

[OblivionGuest]

Hi folks,

I have two NAS's setup on ports 3 & 4 of my BT Business Homehub router. On port 3 I have made sure "Always use this IP address" is set to yes (using the default IP that the Homehub DHCP provides). All works well and good. On port 4 (which I had to switch off Full Fibre to allow use as a normal ethernet port) I can't seem to do this. It hasn't been a problem as even when restarting the router it would apply the same IP however for whatever reason recently after a router reboot, this port/device got assigned a new IP which broke all my NAS configurations on this port.

Is there any reason why I can't save this setting of "Always use this IP address" to YES on port 3 (when I can on port 3 and even change this IP if I want)?

How do I get this working? I don't really want to change the routing/IP settings on my NAS as I feel much more comfortable using the router to use DHCP (but assign the same IP) and feel that this function *should* work as it does on port 3.

Anyone offer any help? Thanks in advance

[licquorice]

Why not use ports 2&3 for consistent addresses rather than 3&4?

Personally I would give the NASs static IP addresses themselves, a much better solution than relying on the hub.

[rbz5416]

As above. just bite the bullet & set static addresses on the NAS, outside the DHCP range. It will take minutes & you'll never have to worry about it again.

[OblivionGuest]

Thank you both for the replies. I guess I should bite the bullet. I'm not very network minded (I just know enough to set up a Plex Media Server for access via Internet) using containers/docker on the NAS so very nervous about borking, even bricking, network config on the NAS (how do I know if the Fixed IP Address is available and what happens if its not, what is the subnet mask and default gateway etc).

I did have a quick look into NAS network config but I can't actually change the Network settings of the adapter as its being used by a Virtual Interface (presumably created by the docker).

I'll check what I have on Port 2 of the router but think that connects to my main powerline adapter so would likely need to reconfigure the devices I have feeding off that but that might be my preferred option at the moment. I guess that's why I'd hoped the feature for the router to store the DHCP address would actually work with some magic somewhere...

Anyway, thanks for the advice and I'll do some reading on how to achieve this and maybe just bite the bullet. 🙂

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

Use any address between 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.63 as these are not used by DHCP. Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and gateway is 192.168.1.254.

[OblivionGuest]

Thank you so much... That is just what I needed... Wish me luck 😄