Set Up Static IP Addressing – Windows

If you are deploying equipment in a data center for the first time, you need to be aware that the IPv4 addresses for your equipment will NOT be dynamically assigned by the provider’s router. This may be a departure from what you have become accustomed to in your home or office setting, but in the data center IP address space is statically routed in the vast majority of cases. Therefor, you need to manually configure your equipment with the IP address space that has been assigned to you.

There’s a very good overview of IPv4 and IPv6 address space, and how allocations are provided to clients, elsewhere on this website – give those a read if the concepts of IP addressing are new to you. Then follow the procedure below for adding a static IP address to recent versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and newer):

Type ‘network’ into the search box on the taskbar – you should get a few results, including one entitled ‘Network And Sharing Center‘ – click on that and the corresponding window will open. In the left-hand pane of that window, click on ‘Change adapter settings‘:

A second window will open, showing your available network connections. Right-click on the one that you need to assign IP address space to, then select ‘Properties‘ from the menu that appears: The Connection Properties dialog box will open, with a list of the services in use by the connection. Select IP protocol you need to modify from the list – we’ll assume IPv4, but note that IPv6 is also available from this list. Once the protocol is highlighted, click the ‘Properties‘ button below the list – this will open another dialog for the IP address settings:

Click the radio button for ‘Use the following IP address‘, then enter the IP address, netmask and gateway info that was given to you by your provider. For DNS server addresses, your provider may provide public DNS IPs, or you can just use Google’s (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). NOTE: if you need to add additional IP addresses to the interface, click the ‘Advanced‘ button and you’ll be presented with another dialog in which you can do so.

Click OK on each successive dialog to close it, then test your IP connectivity to external points on the Internet.