Scanning question

[copiman]

I have been asked to research another way of scanning. On the Panasonics, there is a way to set up scanning to an IP address rather than to PC. In order to do this, the PCs must be set to static. There are only 2 or 3 PCs at this location. My question is: What are the draw backs of setting the PCs to static? They get their IP address from the local ISP.

[emujo]

Re: Scanning question

As long as the PCs remain static, there isn't a drawback, in fact, using a static IP will prevent any DNS issues from causing scan failures. This is assuming that you are not trying to scan across multiple networks as there could be duplicate ip address. emujo

[copiman]

Re: Scanning question

Thanks. I found out the reason they wanted to do it. They cannot remember what tab to push to get to the button to scan. I can rename the button with an A before the name and they all will show up on the screen without looking in the tabs.

[wseyller]

Re: Scanning question

I have been asked to research another way of scanning. On the Panasonics, there is a way to set up scanning to an IP address rather than to PC. In order to do this, the PCs must be set to static. There are only 2 or 3 PCs at this location. My question is: What are the draw backs of setting the PCs to static? They get their IP address from the local ISP.

The IP address they get from the ISP is in no relation to the IP addresses on the local network.

Best way to explain it is the IP address from the ISP is an external IP address known to the entire world on the internet. This is the external IP address. In most cases there is only one external IP address for the entire building.

The router or gateway uses this external IP address on one side to communicate with the rest of the world. On the other side the router creates a separate network that is only useful in a local environment. In the local environment you can say these are internal IP addresses. Only devices in the local environment know of these ip addresses. The ISP or the rest of the world have no clue or knowledge of these internal IP addresses and are only used locally. There are not enough IPv4 addresses to go around if the ISPs had to assign one for each computer or device in the world.

In most cases I use the computers hostname or computer name instead of the local internal IP address for scanning because most client computers receive its IP address dynamically. If each client computer truly has their IP address set static then yes by all means go ahead and just use the IP address for scanning.

There are different way to set a client PC with a static address. You can hardcode it in the network adaptor's properties. When doing this you want to make sure it is outside of the routers dhcp range of IP address that it assigns to devices that come online. Because for example if you turn that computer OFF then a different device may come online during that time and take the IP address that you already set statically. Then when you power back online you then have two devices trying to use the same IP address which causes a conflict. In most routers you can reserve an IP address to certain MAC addresses which ties a particular client PC's network card to that IP address. If the router actually does it's job then no problems. In a similiar situation if a server has the role of DHCP then you can use IP reservation to tie the MAC address of the computer so that only a particular computer is allow to recieve that IP address. With reservation the client PC is set to dynamically get its IP address but because of reservation the DHCP server will always provide that device and only that device that particular IP address.