This page will explain when and how to setup a Static IP for the WAN link of an IQrouter.
Most ISP connections rely on DHCP (dynamic IP assignment upon connection) or some form of authenticated connection, like PPPoE to obtain a dynamic public IP address, so needing to configure a static public IP is rare. That is usually reserved for business accounts, as some scenarios require a constant, known IP. If you have a line provisioned with a static IP, your ISP will have provided you with very specific information on values we discuss below. If you do not have that information, then odds are you just have a DHCP public IP and should proceed without change.
There are two types of scenarios where a Static WAN IP configuration is required, one is described above, where the ISP provisions you with one, the other is when you might want to configure a fixed IP to use the IQrouter behind some other ISP-provided network gear.
ISP Static IP
In this scenario, your ISP has told you that your line is provisioned with a Static IP and will provide you with specifics to use during configuration. Some scenarios support both, where the router will initially get a DHCP address and then you can switch it over to Static, others might not connect until you configure the assigned public IP.
Here is how to configure the static IP. During initial configuration in Step 2, you are able to choose the option of configuring a Static IP and prompted for this information (all fields are required):
Static IP address: This is the public, static IP provided by your ISP
Net Mask: This indicates how large your subnet address space is, enter it exactly as specified by your ISP
Gateway: This is the IP address of the ISPs upstream router your unit will pass traffic to. This is provided by your ISP.
DNS Server: The IP address of an ISP DNS server, provided to you by the ISP.
As soon as you click 'Set Static WAN', the WAN port IP address will be changed.
Local network Static IP
First, a word about why one might want a local static WAN IP. When cascaded behind another router (typically an ISP-provided unit that can not be replaced), the downstream router (like the IQrouter) will normally just connect via DHCP and be able to get Internet. However, because the IP can change over time, functions like DMZ settings or IP-Passthrough on the ISP router might fail to forward traffic to the IQrouter if the IP changes from the originally configured setting. In these cases, it is better to set a permanent IP on the IQrouter and that way DMZ and IP-Passthrough configurations are permanent as well.
So let's work through an example (note: this is an example, your ISP units might well have completely different subnet and IP values):
Assuming the ISP device set up a LAN subnet as 192.168.254.x, and the router itself is at 192.168.254.254, we can then decide that based on that units DHCP range, that the 192.168.254.253 IP is a valid, unused static IP. So we'll use that for the IQrouters WAN IP.
Assuming we've already configured and deployed our IQrouter, we log into the admin UI and then pick Configure->Static WAN IP, where we then see this:
Static Wan configuration
We enter the IP we chose (192.168.254.253) and a subnet mask that matches the subnet mask of the LAN of the ISP device (typically 255.255.255.0), and then set the ISP router as the 'Gateway' and also as the DNS. In case the ISP router does not offer DNS services, enter a valid ISP DNS IP or use one of the public DNS servers from Google, Level3 or others.
When you click 'Set Static WAN', the WAN will change to the static IP entered.
Now you can go back to the ISP router configuration and update the DMZ or IP-passtrough settings using the newly set static IP as the target.
Note that you can revert back to a DHCP WAN configuration by coming back to Configure->Static WAN and clicking on the 'Restore DHCP WAN' button.