View Full Version : Loss of Power and router

12/20/2012, 05:01 PM
I have a question. If I lose power my modem/router lose power. When this happens and things boot back up My IP address is different. When this happens I can no longer login to my controller. The controller is plugged directly into my router. I run everything through dydns. Is there a way around this? Am I missing something. I just lost power for about 10 seconds. Now I can not log in to my controller too see if everything is okay or not.

Thanks in advance. I am sure it is something simple I am missing.

12/20/2012, 05:16 PM
Your controller (or any IP device for that matter) can have its address assigned dynamically by the router or it can be fixed (static). This is called DHCP. In your controller, you want to set DHCP to disable. Then the address in the controller will be fixed and will never change. Once you do that, make sure your port forwarding is correct in your router - that it is forwarding to the now fixed, static IP address of your controller.

12/20/2012, 05:31 PM
I don't think its so much the controller IP address that is changing as it is the one on Dydns. Or is the address in the dydns actually my controller??? Sorry not good with networking. If I were to be at home all I would do is logon to Dydns and then update the IP addy that is showing up as my current IP address. If that makes sense.

12/20/2012, 06:53 PM
What you're talking about is your public IP address assigned by your internet service provider. I'm going to guess that you have cable internet, as they don't update their IP addresses very often, DSL services often update several times a day.

What you need to do is install software on your home computer that will do the automatic updating of your dyndns account for you. Some routers have this functionality as well.

Give us your router make/model as well as your dyndns service and we can point you in the right direction!

12/20/2012, 06:59 PM
Did you download the DynDNS 'updater' for your PC? You can get it here:


That's the little piece of software that tells DynDNS when your ISP changes your IP address. Some routers can do it as well as Justin points out but if you have a PC that runs 7x24, this is real simple to do.

12/20/2012, 09:08 PM
Thanks for the tips. I am at work right now. Albeit my computer doesn't run 24x7 as all I have is a laptop running off of wifi. I will have to check into my router as it is a linksys but not sure on the model number off hand. All I know off the top of my head is its "N"

12/21/2012, 12:51 AM
I have an linksys WRT160Nv1 router as well. I know my laptop is not always on at home nor are we always home with it. So is there something I can do in this router as well to help me out?

12/21/2012, 12:56 AM
You know what. I think I may have had this correct all along. I have DHCP disabled in my controller. When I logged onto my router. My IP address is set to the controller IP address. Now my question here is instead of using the DynDns "hostname" I could just type in the IP addy of my controller to access it when not home? Or can that only be done on my home computer which is why I orginally setup a DynDns account? So confused right now.

12/21/2012, 06:52 AM
You're almost there. You have two different sets of addresses. Your private addresses (typically on a linksys those start with 192.x.x.x) and your public IP address. That is a single IP address, assigned to your router, by your internet service provider.

You can use the internal (192.x.x.x) to access your Apex when you're at home, you are correct for setting disabling DHCP on your controller, that will keep that 192.x.x.x address from changing. However that won't work when outside your home network.

At some point you added an entry to router to point traffic to your router and your public IP address (and a port) to your Apex, and yes you could use that public IP address alone to connect to your Apex when away from home. The problem with connecting via that public IP is that it will occasionally change (as you've found, with power outages). That's where dyndns comes in. You can setup a program on your computer, or possibly your router, to automatically repoint yourname.yourdyndnsdomain.org to that number every time it changes. That way, you'll only ever need that domain name to access your controller.

Luckily your router can do this for you automatically! If you check page 9 of the User Guide for your router (found here - http://homedownloads.cisco.com/downloads/userguide/1224638715177/WRT160N_ug.pdf ) you will find instructions on how to enter your dyndns information in the router so that anytime your external ip address changes it will automatically update your dyndns hostname. From that point on you'll always be able to access your controller using the dyndns hostname only, good stuff!

Hope this helps!

12/21/2012, 08:14 AM
Thank you very much. I think I did everything correct and have both suggestions completed now so hopefully I will no longer have any problems if/when I lose power or my IP address changes.