Now that we have our Cisco router and switch configured it is now time to manually assign the computers an IP Address so that the router knows where each computer is.
The best way for me to understand why IP addresses are important and how they work is to think about the postal service. Just like how every single house as a specific house number and street name to identify it, every computer has an IP address and a subnet mask.
So that we can get our network up and functioning I’m going to show you how to manually assign an IP address to every computer in our network. This can be kind of tedious, but since we only have 15 computers right now, it won’t be that big of a deal and will give you some good practice.
I personally have a MacBook Pro and love it. So, I’m first going to show you how to manually assign an IP address on a Mac and then I will show you how to do it in Windows XP.
How to manually assign an IP address on a Mac
- Go to System Preferences
- Click on Network
- Select your Ethernet Port
- Select ‘Manually’ from Configure IPv4:
- Change the IP Address to: 192.168.2.2
- Change the Subnetmask to: 255.255.255.0
- Change the Router to 192.168.2.1
- Click Apply
How to manually assign an IP address in Windows XP
- Click Start
- Open up the Control Panel
- Double Click Network Connections
- Right Click your Local Area Connection
- Select Properties
- In the white window that appears, scroll down and select Internet Protocol(TCP/IP)
- Select Properties
- Select Use the following IP address
- Change the IP Address to: 192.168.2.3
- Change the Subnetmask to: 255.255.255.0
- Change the Router to 192.168.2.1
- Click OK
- Click Close
As you can see we are incrementing the IP address by one. So with every computer on the network assign it a different IP address all the way up to 16.
Like I said before this process can be very tedious, especially if you have a network that has hundreds of computers. Fortunately there is a much quicker way to automatically assign IP Address called DHCP which I will get into later.
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