Setting a static IP on the Kindle...

[Crescent Pulsar S]

So, I'm getting tired of technology being stupid when doing things on its own and creating IP conflicts, thus an inability to connect to wifi without resetting the router every time, but I don't know what to do to set it up. There are five fields I'm being presented with:

IP address
Router
Subnet mask
DNS 1
DNS 2

All but the third one has the same thing, 127.0.0.1. What am I supposed to do with this? ;/

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Are you sure you have a Kindle? Mine, I just told it which router to use (the building is full of wi-fi). Then I supplied the encryption key. (Then I had to sign in to my Amazon account, but that's another matter.) Haven't had to do a thing since. Same with the tablets and the PCs. Last time I had to deal with a list of details like yours was when I was running Windows 98 SE.

Or perhaps you have a very old cable/DSL modem/router. I feel for you: new routers ain't cheap.

[Spica75]

All but the third one has the same thing, 127.0.0.1.

Well i can at least mention that 127.0.0.1 essentially means local/home.

But i´m afraid i have zero clue what you´re trying to do and with what hardware, so i can´t help much.

If you´re trying to access something over internet, then you need an adress that whatever you connect through recognises properly.

While you´re online(just to make sure you have a valid connection), go to windows start button, type in cmd and run it to get the command prompt, type in netstat and see what you get, then type ipconfig. Ipconfig will show you what adress any networks you have uses, but sometimes netstat will show other stuff, like proxies or such.

Anything starting with 169.254 are autoconfigured stuff that may or may not be correctly working, anything starting with 192.168 is a local network setup ( if there is none and that´s what you want, it may be a good idea to use such an adress since it´s a regular standard ).
And like i said above, any 127.0.0.1 just means "here"/local/home.

Your network card should have an adress its using when you´re online. That´s the one i´m guessing you´re looking for, at least as a starter. But again, i´m just guessing wildly.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

What I'm trying to do is set an IP address for the Kindle so the same one isn't used by multiple devices, which causes them to fail to connect to the modem/router.

As for the IP(v4) stuff I looked up, I couldn't make much sense out of it. I saw the ethernet connection, 192.168.0.7 (default gateway ended in .1), but there were "tunnel adapters" that I have no idea about.

Are you sure you have a Kindle? Mine, I just told it which router to use (the building is full of wi-fi). Then I supplied the encryption key. (Then I had to sign in to my Amazon account, but that's another matter.) Haven't had to do a thing since. Same with the tablets and the PCs. Last time I had to deal with a list of details like yours was when I was running Windows 98 SE.

Or perhaps you have a very old cable/DSL modem/router. I feel for you: new routers ain't cheap.

Yeah, it's a Kindle Fire (HD, I think?). Aside from that, there's the PS3 that uses wifi, two Rokus, my mother's iPad when she's here (a recent addition), two laptops, and whatever mobile device our longstanding house guest has.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the modem/router, although it's not all that old. It can handle over a 100Mbs, as far as I can recall. I'd check for more details, but I don't feel like moving it out of its hidey-hole because it's a pain to get my ethernet cable to stay inserted with the thing on it gone.

[Cheb]

127.0.0.1 means "self". In theory, *any* device has IP 127.0.0.1 which it can use to refer to itself.

192.168.x.x is a range reserved for local networks. I.e. your router has an external internet address (or a different, incompatible 192.168.xx.xx if it's a part of larger LAN of your ISP) while your LAN devices use this range.

Maybe some other device has a manually set IP the router doesn't know that and assigns it to your Kindle? Recheck everything and if something uses manually set IP, change it to some high number like 192.168.0.100

I have web servers in my LAN manually set to 192.168.0.9 and 192.168.0.10, so if I try to attach more than 6 devices total I *may* run into conflicts. I don't know. Probably depends on how smart the router is.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

Not all that smart, apparently. XD

Well, I think I get it, but when I go to set the IP on the Kindle, which field should I input the change? Or should I change more than one field?

[Cheb]

Your LAN is probably 192.168.0.x -- meaning, you should only change the last field, and the valid range should be 2..254

Note that by setting IP manually you probably forfeit the ability to use other WiFi networks (like public ones) as these may have different ranges.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I mean, of the five fields I mentioned in my opening post.

I won't have to worry about not having access elsewhere, since I rarely leave the house.

[Cheb]

"IP address" then.

"Router" probably should point to the LAN IP of the router (I wonder why: most devices find the router automatically).
"Subnet mask" is a coded sequence defining valid range of addresses (is probably 255.255.255.0 )
DNS 1, DNS 2 - Domain Name Servers, the public services that translate "fukufics com" to "108.59.4.83" for the machine to use -- again, in theory this should be detected automatically, so in most cases you leave them blank.

[Té Rowan]

If leaving all of these fields empty doesn’t clue the ’puter into doing this drudge work for you, try setting "Subnet mask" to 255.255.255.0 and "Router" to (if your router is anything like the Thomson wireless routers so common here) 192.168.1.254, leaving the remaining fields empty still.