There can be several reasons you might want to assign a static IP address to a device in your network. The most common reason to do this though is to make a device easily accessible. This is mostly used for devices such as printers or a NAS device. In this guide we will assign a static IP to a device using the settings of an AirPort Express or Extreme. This also works on every Time Capsule.

Prerequisites

To continue with this guide you will need the two things listed below. This guide doesn’t go into detail about how to do this.

• You need an already working network using an Airport or Time Capsule base station
• You need the MAC address of the device you want to assign the static IP

Assigning the static IP

First of all you will need to open the Airport Utility. You can find this in the Utilities folder in your Applications. Click on your base station and click ‘Edit’. Go to the tab ‘Network’ and next to ‘DHCP Reservations’ you’ll see a plus sign. Click it, and a new window will open. In this new window you can enter a descriptive name of the device, the MAC address and you can choose an IP address. See the example in the image below:

Saving the options and restarting the base station

After filling out the fields click ‘Save’, and then click on ‘Update’. Your Airport or Time Capsule will now restart. Please note that during this process which can take a few minutes your wireless network won’t work. It will come back online automatically.

It might be necessary to restart the device you assigned the IP might also need to be restarted before the new IP address is assigned to it.