My DHCP IP address changed this morning?

Hey Wilders,

Usually my local Ip address usually ends with 8, but when I turned on my laptop today, it ends in 5?

My family all have iphones and laptops connected to our home network so I'm guessing one of their devices took my former IP address?

Does it matter what my LAN IP address is or would there be no difference whether my ip address ends in a different number now?

 

If all of the devices on your LAN are configured to use DHCP and all of the devices/users are clean and trustworthy, all will work as they should.

 

So there is no difference in security if my laptop's LAN IP address switches randomly to a different one?

 

When an IP isn't statically set, the IP address is assigned by the equipment itself. It's usually the first available IP that's used and is decided by the order the devices connect. As long as there's no malicious devices or compromised equipment being used for a MITM (man in the middle) attack, there should be no problems.

 

Network is secured with WPA2 and and when you mean malicious devices, do you mean infected machines?

I'm just wondering since my laptop's always used that one IP address and then it switched to a different IP address most likely because another device took my previous IP address.

So for example lets say an infected machine had the ip address that I'm using now, could that transfer malware or something because I'm using that Ip address now?

 

Unless you've got port forwarding rules in the router for that specific IP address, it won't matter if the IP changes. They'll all be the same. As for an infected device on your network infecting other devices, this is possible depending on how much access each device has to the others and the firewall settings for each device.

 

Some routers offer DHCP reservation, meaning a given Mac Address will allways get the same IP address. For security nerds this offers some options of using static IP security advantages with the comfort of DHCP (dynamic IP address allocation). Dynamic IP addresses are easier to use (no setup hassle), so I would not mind these incidental changes (problably your IP lease time ran out and you got another IP address assigned)