In cases where you need your game console to have a strictly specified network address, use our guide to enable NAT mode and a static IP address on the PlayStation 3. It is quite important to do this setting if you are using port forwarding. Setting up port forwarding allows your router to direct network traffic specifically to specific devices that you specify. Without setting up a static IP address, port forwarding will only work when you’ve manually configured it, but every time you restart your PS3, the console will automatically get a new IP. As soon as the new network address takes effect, port forwarding will be broken and stop working.
What are IP Addresses?
IP addresses are four groups of numbers, separated by dots, that allow computers and network devices to identify each other. Each computer must have at least one IP address, and two different devices cannot have exactly the same address. If this happens, then none of them will be able to access the Internet. You can find tons of more detailed information on this subject at the link below. All of it is unlikely to be useful to you, but you will be able to more accurately understand how any local or global network works. Information about networks, IP addresses and gateways: http://portforward.com/networking/subnetting.htm
If the router has a choice – to assign a static or dynamic IP address to the device, then most of them will automatically set the dynamic one. This is because for the functioning of a network consisting of several dynamic addresses, most often no configuration is required and everything happens automatically. The end user simply plugs his computer or other device into the network and everything works. If all devices on the network have dynamic addresses, it is the router that assigns and reassigns them automatically at its discretion in order to ensure the operability of all devices. After each restart of the computer or any other device connected to the network, they turn to the router to obtain a new address. The router checks the availability of free addresses and issues one that is not currently being used by any other device. This is important to understand. If you have configured a static IP address on your PS3 console, the router does not know this and therefore it can assign exactly the same address to computers, mobile devices located in the same network. As a result, this leads to the fact that both the console and the second device with the same IP will not be able to connect to the Internet. Therefore, if it becomes necessary to set a static IP address for the PS3 console, you must reserve it and prevent it from being reassigned by the router. A dynamic IP server is most commonly referred to as DHCP.
Setting up a static IP on the PS3 console
Step 1: Turn on your PlayStation 3 and go to Settings in the main menu.
Step 2: Scroll down to the Network Settings section. Most often it is located at the very bottom of the list of settings.
Step 3: After selecting the Network Settings section, navigate the menu to the right and select the List of network connections item.
Step 4: Make a note of the specified IP address, subnet mask, and router name. This data will be useful to you a little later. Return to the Network Settings section.
Step 5: Scroll to the right in the menu and select the Internet connection settings item in the list that appears.
Step 6: In the pop-up window that appears, click OK and continue with the configuration.
Step 7: Select Custom from the suggested customization methods.
Step 8: From the proposed connection methods, select the one with which your console is connected to the network – Wired or Wireless.
Step 9: For our setup, you will need to enter some parameters manually. Select the appropriate item in the next PlayStation settings menu.
Step 10: The selection of speed and duplex modes must be left in the automatic state.
Step 11: On the IP Address Settings page, select the Manual option.
Step 12: Enter the IP address you want to assign to the console and it will be permanently assigned to it. It is very important that this address is outside the DHCP address range of your router. You can find out the values of this range by opening the router settings page and finding the DHCP or LAN section. Alternatively, simply set the IP address as close as possible to the one you wrote down in one of the previous steps. For example – if your console is currently using the address 192.168.0.2 and it is this that you rewrote in the settings a little earlier, then it would be best to set something like this new address – 192.168.0.200. If you saw something like 192.168.0.240 in the list of PS3 network connections, then it is best now to set, for example, 192.168.0.2. Change the value of only the last group of numbers, without affecting the first three. The value of the last group can fluctuate between 2 and 254. It is not worth thinking about this and choosing a specific number.
The gateway and subnet mask should be specified in the corresponding fields. Use exactly the values that you wrote down in one of the previous steps.
You also need to specify the DNS servers your PS3 should use. This is necessary in cases where your network router does not automatically receive information about them. First, you need to figure out which servers to set up on your PS3. The easiest way is to call your ISP’s support team and ask a related question. Most likely, you will be asked what exactly you need this information for. Say it as it is – it requires setting up your PS3. The operator will give you two IP addresses. One of them is the Primary DNS server, the second is Secondary.
Step 13: Set the MTU parameters to Automatic.
Step 14: Be sure to select the “Do not use” item in the proxy server settings. It is worth using a proxy and configuring it in your console only in cases where your entire connection to the network is via a proxy server. In order to carry out such a setting, if necessary, you should obtain the specific network settings from your Internet provider, which must be entered manually at this step.
Step 15: You should definitely turn off UPNP technology.
Step 16: At this stage, you will be shown all the settings that you have made. Check their correctness and confirm the changes by pressing the X key.
Step 17 Enable connection testing on the next menu page.
Step 18 All stages of testing should pass successfully, except for UPNP technology, as we disabled it earlier. This completes the setup.