5 Static IP's. Don't Understand.

[ghall426]

This question relates to a fast food restaurant setup, not my personal home setup. The restaurant uses broadband for our credit card transactions. For the last couple years, we simply had a cable modem with a single IP.

We wanted to provide wireless internet to our customers and were required by the corporation to use "Wayport". Wayport required 5 static IP addresses, so the cable company said we needed to replace the cable modem with a cable router.

Now the Wayport box that was installed has several components inside, one of which I believe is another router. The wayport box has 4 ports for us to use (although we are only using 2 at this time), and a WAN cable which is connected to port 1 on the cable router.

My question is: Why do we need 5 IP's? Can we really be accessing all of them even though we're only connected to a single port on the cable router? And I don't understand why we need 5 IP's if we only have 4 ports to use on the Wayport box.

I'm a little confused. Please help.

Greg

[YeOldeStonecat]

Wayport seems to have a lot of deals with big chains...as far as providing hot spots/portals for wireless guest access, charging for guest internet access, etc.

With most broadband accounts, with static IP packages..you usually have the basic package with a single IP, and a higher package with 5x IPs. Wayport most likely likes to use an additional IP for the guest traffic..so that does not impact the business/office network traffic. So their "gateway" appliances separate the two...providing the secure office network use of the first IP, and separating the guest network and having that only use the second IP. And perhaps a 3rd IP for remote support/access to the gateway...or if the network is large enough..with many users...the device may be able to load balance the guest network using several additional IPs.

Sharing an IP with NAT, traditionally on smaller broadband routers...it allows up to 253 devices to share that single IP address using NAT..so it's really not related to a router having 4x ports on the back of it.

[ghall426]

So the 5 IPs are not necesarily assigned to the 5 ports on the cable router? If that's the case, wouldn't the cable modem we used to have with the single LAN port still work OK?

I believe that DHCP needed to be disabled in the cable router to allow the wayport router to take over and do it's thing.

Greg

[ghall426]

Another question. If I ping the static IPs from another computer, I only get a ping back from 1 of the 5 which doesn't make sense to me either.

[YeOldeStonecat]

So the 5 IPs are not necesarily assigned to the 5 ports on the cable router? If that's the case, wouldn't the cable modem we used to have with the single LAN port still work OK?

I believe that DHCP needed to be disabled in the cable router to allow the wayport router to take over and do it's thing.

Greg

Most cable ISPs will use higher end cable modems that have multle LAN ports on them, for their business grade accounts. Technically the more basic single LAN port modems would work..if you uplinked them to a switch..and plugged your static public IP boxes into the switch. But...the ISPs have to support the modems in the business department differently..so they want you to use their higher end cable modems, like some Arris and SMC brand units.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Another question. If I ping the static IPs from another computer, I only get a ping back from 1 of the 5 which doesn't make sense to me either.

May be related to some VLAN rules that they implement in their device. Never worked with that Wayport brand box before..so I'm not familiar with them.