Is there a reason to change the gateway from .1 to .254?

[Ichinisan]

I just had to help someone change their router from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.254 to be compatible with the manual IP settings of an existing network printer. I've encountered devices with a gateway address of x.x.x.254 in the past.

Is there a reason for using .254 instead of .1 or .255?

 

[mxnerd]

if networks mask is 255.255.255.0, then most commonly used gateway IP is .1 or .254 since you have can have up to 254 machines & 254 IP addresses pairs.

It's just convention. Different vendors could have different convention for their routers. But you can assign/change router's IP with anything from 1 to 254 in the network as gateway as long as no other machines/router take that IP address.

.0 is for representing the whole network, .255 is used for broadcasting. Neither can be used for assigning IP for individual machines.

 

[kevnich2]

It's all personal preference. I've always set my gateways to .1 but have seen just as many other people with a preference for .254 for gateways. No hard rule or recommendation for this though.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Why didn't you just configure the printer to agree with the rest of the network instead?

 

[Ichinisan]

Why didn't you just configure the printer to agree with the rest of the network instead?

I figure it should be fairly obvious:
1. No familiarity with their printer.
2. Who knows what might be referencing that printer by its current manual IP address.

 

[XavierMace]

I figure it should be fairly obvious:
1. No familiarity with their printer.
2. Who knows what might be referencing that printer by its current manual IP address.

Versus what might be referencing the gateway by it's IP address? Yeah, change the printer.

 

[Ichinisan]

Why didn't you just configure the printer to agree with the rest of the network instead?

I figure it should be fairly obvious:
1. No familiarity with their printer.
2. Who knows what might be referencing that printer by its current manual IP address.

Versus what might be referencing the gateway by it's IP address? Yeah, change the printer.

The printer's settings revealed to me what the original gateway IP had been. We changed the new gateway that was being installed to match it.

I'm extremely familiar with the new/current gateway we were installing. I was doing the initial configuration as I have done for hundreds of Arris WiFi cable modems.

I guess the OP wasn't clear about that because I wanted to emphasize I was configuring it to match the settings of the customer's original network.

 

[Genx87]

I just had to help someone change their router from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.254 to be compatible with the manual IP settings of an existing network printer. I've encountered devices with a gateway address of x.x.x.254 in the past.

Is there a reason for using .254 instead of .1 or .255?

The reality is a gateway can be what ever you deem it within the network range. My home router is .100

 

[jardows]

Some routers will only allow the DHCP pool to start after the address of the gateway. Not a good design, but something to watch out for. Essentially, that would shut off DHCP if you set the gateway address to .254

 

[PliotronX]

We typically use it for VLAN routing to more easily differentiate the 'virtual' gateways.

Some routers will only allow the DHCP pool to start after the address of the gateway. Not a good design, but something to watch out for. Essentially, that would shut off DHCP if you set the gateway address to .254

Good to know!

 

[Ichinisan]

Some routers will only allow the DHCP pool to start after the address of the gateway. Not a good design, but something to watch out for. Essentially, that would shut off DHCP if you set the gateway address to .254

That's good to know. Thanks.