PS3 wireless network help, please?

[shopkins]

I really want a 60 gb PS3 to complement my new HDTV, but there's an Internet connectivity issue I'm worried about.

When I moved into my apartment my landlord told me I could use his wireless Internet, he doesn't protect it and he doesn't care. He uses a Linksys router and that's worked fine with my PC and my laptop.

But I've heard the way the PS3 automatically choses an IP address can cause conflicts. That would be annoying if it took the IP address from my laptop or PC, but a bigger problem if it took the IP address from some of his equipment. Bearing in mind that I have no access at all to his router, is there a way to make sure that the PS3 uses an IP address different from anything else on the network? I'm no computer whiz, so I could be misunderstanding or mangling this, so if someone would correct anything I'm getting wrong I would appreciate it.

[Half Japanese]

Granted I'm on a secured wireless network, but in my apartment we have the following connected to our internet:

2 Desktop PCs (1 wired, 1 wireless)
1 Laptop PC (wireless)
1 PS3 (wireless)
2 Xbox 360s
1 Wii (wireless)
1 Modded Xbox

I'm on the ps3 enough to have noticed if it had interfered with anything else on our connection, either with the Linksys router we used to have or the current AT&T equipment have had any issues. You should be fine.

[Flack]

Devices don't choose IP addresses. Without getting super technical, instead they ... well, it's kind of like this.

- Client connects to network.
- Client says, "Hey, I need an IP address!"
- DHCP server says, "Hey, I hand out IP addresses!"
- DHCP server picks an unused address and assigns it to the client.
- Client uses the assigned IP for a predetermined length of time.

DHCP can run on either a server or, in your case, DHCP is built into the Linksys Router. Whenever a device connects to the router, the Linksys checks its leases, finds an available IP address, and assigns it to the client. Assuming all your clients (your laptop, your PC, your PS3 and your lanlord's PC) are all configured to use DHCP, it would actually be pretty difficult to get two clients to use the same IP.

In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of a couple of ways to do what you are worried about. One would be running two DHCP servers on the same network. For instance, if your landlord got another Linksys router that also had DHCP running on it and plugged it into the first router, then you would have two DHCP servers that could possibly both hand out the same IP address. The other way to mess things up is if you were to hard code an IP address (called a "static IP") into one of your clients. The problem here is that the DHCP Server doesn't know about the static IP, so it may try and assign a dynamic IP address to a client and it may be the same IP address that you statically entered on another client (*1).

Based on the information you provided above I would say your PS3 will never cause an IP conflict.

(*1 -- If you really want to get into it, there are ways to prevent this. One is to use an exclusion list. For example, in most DHCP Servers you can reserve one or more IPs from your DHCP range. At work, I exclude 192.168.1..1 - 192.168.1.99 from DHCP, and use .100 - .250 for DHCP clients. That way I have 100 IPs I can use for servers. As long as I static in an IP under 100, I know a DHCP cannot grab that IP. Another way is to use reservations. In DHCP you can reserve an IP for a specific client. This works okay if you only have to do one or two but in a larger environment you do not want to manage all your IPs this way, especially if you have multiple DHCP servers and scopes.)

In next week's lesson we will discuss DHCP SuperScopes, router helper addresses, and how to manage 9,000 DHCP clients in 130 different physical locations ...