by GJ51 » Thu Jan 13, 2011 8:00 am
NO, you do not have to reconfigure all devices on the network. First, you shoud read through all the documentation for your router and at least gain an overview understanding of the basic functions and setup. All routers are slightly unique and have different menus, but they all do the same basic network functions. If you provide us with your routers mfgr. and model # it is easy enoguh to download the manual and answer any specific questions you might have.
If you've read through what I've provided so far, it may take more than one read through to get a real grasp of what's going on. It is detailed and often confusing information that can be a bit duanting the first time you try to get your feet wet in the network management pool, but as I've posted many times, if you're into Subsonic, your more than likely going to be expanding your home network as time goes on, and there's no time like the present to start learning, unless you can afford the Geek Squad, who probably can't do it anyway.
Basically, I recommend manually assigning the internal IP address of the computer that will host Subsonic, so that DHCP will never reassign it a new address and thus break all the connections that you'll set up in the router to forward the port that Subsonic will use to communicate with the internet. Think of your network as an apartment building with 255 apartments that can have several people in each apartment. Think of the port number as the name of a person in the apartment building. When the doorbell rings, the mailman tells you he has a delivery for port 8080 (just an example) but he doesn't know which apartment it goes to. The router then uses the port forwarding table to tell the mailman that 8080 lives in the apartment located at 192.168.1.254 (again an example). This way the request is handed to the correct computer, which when it sees that it is a request on port 8080, it triggers a response from the Subsonic service which is just sitting by the door listening for a request for 8080 (the Subsonic service). When the service gets the incomming request, it passes it to the program and processes the requested information and triggers the program to send the requested data back to the computer that requested it. It is a singular operation that does not affect the other devices on your network. If you plug in a new computer, or connect a laptop over Wifi, the router will function normally and use DHCP to automatically assign internal addresses to the new devices. The reason you want to assign an address to the computer hosting Subsonic at the upper end of the router's range of addresses, is to eliminate the possibility of the router assigning that computer's IP address to a new device thus breaking the communication link to Subsonic. It doesn't always happen, but it's an issue that's worth avoiding. I've spent many long hours troubleshooting network issues only to find, surprise, surprise the router assigned the same address to two different computers, or just changed an address arbitrarily.
Remember, the more specific your questions and the more information you provide describing your hardware and software platform, the better will be the answers you get from other users who know the process.
Gary J
http://bios-mods.com
http://www.maplegrovepartners.com
http://theaverageguy.tv/category/tagpodcasts/cyberfrontiers/