IPv4, IPv6, static, dynamic, who understands IP addressing?
I do, I’m going to make sure you do
as soon as we get done talking.
All that and more, coming up now.
Hello everybody, welcome back, my name is Adam Gordon,
an edutainer here at ITProTV,
coming at you with another fun-filled and exciting episode
of what can you do with Server 2019,
Server 2016, and/or Server 2022.
Well, you can do lots of stuff,
and in this series we show you how to do common tasks,
things that you’re probably scratching your head about,
and often wonder about.
Everybody else knows how to do them, why don’t I?
It’s because you and I haven’t spent time together yet.
In this episode we’re going to take a look
at how you can understand
what kind of IP address your system is using.
Is it an IPv4 or IPv6 address
and equally importantly, is it static,
assigned manually and configured so it doesn’t change,
or is dynamic, assigned automatically through what we call DHCP,
the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol,
and essentially rotates and potentially changes over time,
keeping your system connected,
but allowing your system to essentially pull an IP address
out of a pool and lease one,
as opposed to owning one when it’s static.
We’re going to take a look at all that,
and make sure you understand what’s going on there.
Join me here, if you will.
We’re going to be able to do this across Server 2016,
Server 2019, and/or Server 2022.
In this particular episode,
I’m going to do this on Server 2022,
it’s become available, it’s something people are using,
something you very well may have deployed,
and the good news is no matter
what version of server you’re running,
what we’re about to show you how to do,
the tools we use,
the approaches we encourage you to think about using,
all of that is the same,
regardless of the version you’re running.
So, whether you’re on 16, 29, or 2022,
you can use PowerShell, as I’m about to show you,
you can use through the Network Configuration
in Control Panel,
and seeing the properties of the IP address
based on their binding to a network card,
you can see all of that in the same way
using the same tools, going to the same places,
non-advised of it is going to change.
Now, I’m going to show you two ways we can tell
what kind of IP address you have, IPv4 or IPv6.
You will find often you have both.
And I’m going to show you not only how to do that,
but I’m going to show you that we can then decide
and understand whether it’s static or dynamic,
and we can do all that from the command line,
as well as doing that from within the graphical interface.
We’ll jump in and begin by taking a look
at the command line, in this case, PowerShell.
If you don’t remember or don’t understand
where to find PowerShell,
you can go to your Start menu and you’ll find that
depending on the version of PowerShell you have installed,
the default version that comes with
and is installed by default on the server,
the older version, Version 5x will be right here,
the square I’m pointing to under the Windows Server area.
If you’ve installed a new version,
like PowerShell 7, as I have,
we’ll see it in the Start menu.
You could always go down here
to the Windows PowerShell folder
and see your versions of PowerShell installed
and access them right from there,
and/or the new version up under PowerShell there, as well.
We’re going to use the new version PowerShell 7
to be able to do this demonstration.
As I often remind you to do,
when we talk about the use of PowerShell,
right clicking and starting it by running as administrator
is going to give you maximum flexibility
as you use PowerShell and give you rights to do most,
if not all of the things that we’re talking about,
without having to worry about changing out your session
or upgrading your credential
or being prompted, or anything like that.
So, I’ve gone ahead and I’ve already started up PowerShell,
it’s running as an administrator,
as you could see right up at the top there.
And I’ve issued a very straightforward command
called the IPconfig command, short for IP configuration,
and I’ve added the /all switch at the end of it
to see the complete list of the configuration
as opposed to a truncated shortened version
that doesn’t give me all the information I’m looking for.
And in the case of understand
which kind of IP address or addresses do I have,
IPv4 and/or IPv6,
and what’s the status of that IP address,
is it static or dynamic,
this information will all be found
through the IP configuration output that we get
with this command, so it’s very simple to do.
Now, you could actually run this same command
from the Windows command line,
you don’t have to use PowerShell,
because this is a Windows command,
it has nothing to do with PowerShell.
The nice thing about PowerShell is that
it will run any and all commands
whether they’re PowerShell centric or not,
as long as that command exists in Windows
and it’s available to PowerShell, it will execute.
And so I don’t have to put in the IPconfig
and the path and all that to tell it where to find it.
PowerShell knows and it believes when I type it,
that it’s legitimate, it checks, and if it is,
it goes ahead and executes with no trouble.
So, IPconfig is a standard networking command that we use,
it shows us the configuration of the system,
and when we add the all switch,
it allows us to see everything we want to see.
Now, when I scroll down here beyond just the basic stuff
about the name of the machine and some information
that for our purposes in this conversation
is not all that critical,
we get to see the Ethernet adapter information,
which tells us what the network interface
in our machine is configured as, or how it is configured.
I could see that it is a Hyper V Network adapter,
I said I’m running a Windows virtual machine,
using Server 2022, so that makes sense.
I can see, in this case, that these two lines right here,
DHCP Enabled, Autoconfiguration Enabled,
implies that I have a dynamic address,
I’m getting it through the DHCP system,
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is used
to allow a pool of addresses
to be made available to machines
and allows those machines to come in
and grab one for a predetermined period of time,
that period of time is going to be available to us
right here under the Lease Obtained, Lease Expires area.
And that means that for this duration,
and we can see the information about it right there,
from Friday, September 10, 2021
at approximately 6:47 AM,
to Saturday September 11, 2021,
roughly 24 hours later,
you could see that lease is available,
I’ve got that IP address,
it’s good for one day or approximately 24 hours,
according to the current configuration.
So, I can see that it is dynamic, it is not static.
And I can see that the address of the DHCP Server
that’s giving me that dynamic information,
that dynamic IP address is right there.
And I can also see, if I choose to, right up here,
what my actual IPv4 address is,
that is my IPv4 address, IP Version 4, for IPv4.
And although I do potentially have a DHCP system,
or I can, I should say, have a DHCP system
that may hand out IPv6 addresses,
I may or may not have one,
and so right now I don’t see an IPv6 address,
I simply see a link local IPv6 address right there,
which is an address that is available for me
to do certain things with the system,
but it’s not an IPv6 address that I would normally use
to communicate with other systems across the internet,
for instance, or something like that.
And so we do see that we’re running an IPv4 solution,
and we see evidence of that just by looking at the configuration.
So, it’s easy to check if we know what to look for,
but we can also do this through the graphical interface.
Let’s minimize PowerShell.
Let’s open up the graphical interface
to see the same information using
the properties of the network card,
in this case, our Ethernet adapter.
So, I’m going to right click
on this little icon right down here at the bottom
where I’m hovering, where it says Network Internet Access.
That’s going to be my network card
and I’m going to choose to go in and I’m going to choose
to open Network and Internet Settings
from my little pop up menu down there,
and that’s going to bring up the Control Panel
and show me the settings, currently the status is
where I am right over here, of my connection.
I’m connected out to the internet, as you can see,
and if I come down here under Advanced Network Settings,
I’m going to come over here
to where it says Change adapter options.
I’m going to click on that,
it’s going to open up what may be familiar to many of you
if you’re used to working with older systems,
you will see that this is traditional earlier,
let’s say back in like Windows 7 days,
and Windows Vista, let’s say Server 2000,
maybe 2008, 2012,
if you know about older operating systems
you probably would be used to looking in the Control Panel
and seeing your internet connection
or your Ethernet cards represented using older icons like this.
And so this is my Ethernet connection, this is my network card.
I can right click on it
and I can choose to look at the properties,
and notice a little blue and yellow shield
that is to the left of Properties, that is going to allow me
to open this with administrative capabilities
and administrative rights,
and that means that I’ll have the ability
to be able to modify, look at what’s there,
but also modify and make changes to those settings, if necessary.
Alright, so imagine going to go ahead and open this up,
I’m looking at the properties of the network connection
of the Ethernet card.
I’ve got a bunch of different options here,
really only one interests us,
it’s the fourth option down,
it says Internet Protocol Version 4, IPv4, as you can see,
and/or Internet Protocol Version 6.
So, I can check the status of either
or both of those addresses
that are assigned in order to be able to…
it’s hard to keep all those words straight in your mouth,
I can check the status of that to make sure
that I see whether I do indeed have an IPv4, an IPv6,
one or both addresses assigned.
So, I’m going to highlight the IPv4,
we’re going to go ahead double click, double clicking,
by the way, is the same thing as highlighting,
and although I didn’t choose to do this,
clicking the Properties button
at the lower right hand corner there,
it does the same thing.
And when I do that you could see
that I am able to see the properties,
in this case on the general tab,
I could see that I’m currently set
to obtain an address automatically,
I’ll just zoom in so you can see that.
And what that means is that I’m using DHCP
as we already saw evidence of in PowerShell
and I’m getting that IP address assigned to me automatically.
I don’t see all the information about
how long the lease is for, what the actual IP address is,
I would have to use the command line
to find that information,
but I’ve already shown you how to do that.
But, I can check the status of the IP address assignment
and figure out easily whether it is indeed
a DHCP driven address dynamic,
D for DHCP, D for dynamic, or it is static.
And if I choose the other option,
use the following IP address,
I can type in the IP address here very easily
just by doing this
and then putting in the appropriate IP address, 10. 0. 0. 9,
or whatever the case may be,
along with the appropriate subnet mask
and/or default gateway,
and I could also specify my DNS servers
if I need to, as well, for name resolution,
internet access, things like that.
As long as I have the right IP address information,
the right subnet, and the right IP address block for use
on whatever network I want to connect to, I can,
if I have permission and a need,
assign my own static IP address,
provided I pay attention to the following rule;
it must be unique,
meaning, someone else cannot be already
using this IP address anywhere in my network,
or I’ll have a conflict,
and IP address conflict implies both machines
will not be able to send or receive
until we change that IP address out on one of them,
getting rid of that conflict
that’s causing the inability to transmit.
So, we have to be careful about setting these addresses
and know what we’re doing.
But, I could easily do a static IP address
or engage in a static IP address assignment,
simply by modifying the properties right here.
I can leave it as the default, which the dynamic address,
just by leaving everything that we saw intact.
Oh, and one other thing, let me just go back in,
I forgot to show you,
I could do the same thing with IPv6 right down here.
It looks the same in the sense
that ultimately the window looks the same.
The only difference is that
it is a little bit longer for the entry field
because IPv6 addresses are longer overall,
they’re 128 as opposed to 32 bits,
so typing them out takes more space,
but you’ll see by default
we are obtaining those addresses automatically
if they’re available through a DHCP server
and again, if we want to use a static assignment
just simply toggle that,
type in the appropriate address in the appropriate manner,
meaning again, I know that I have the right network address,
right subnet block, and the right address as well.
Once I’ve done all that
and put all that information in and I apply it,
I’ll have a static IP address
as opposed to dynamic, if I choose to.
Alright, so, we’re going to cancel out of here,
cancel out of here, cancel out of here,
get out of here, get back to our screen.
Now, if you just want to go ahead,
and let’s just clear this for just one second,
if you just want to see what IPconfig does
without the IPconfig all,
you’ll see it does tell us
just the bare minimal information that we need to know.
It tells us that we do have an IPv4 address,
it does tell us that that is available,
but it doesn’t tell us whether it’s coming to us
from DHCP or whether it’s static.
If I want to see that information, I have to IPconfig all,
getting that full configuration information
is going to be important.
And as I suggested to you,
we could do this from the command line,
just one last thing I’ll show you quickly
before we wrap up and we can do that right from here,
if we do CMD, so the Windows Command line
which is probably one of our oldest tools in Windows,
it’s been around forever,
notice I launched it as an administrator,
so I don’t have to worry about having permission to do this.
I’m just going to go ahead
and make it a little bit easier for us to see that,
we’ll bump that font up, and make that a 20 point,
so it looks kind like it did in PowerShell.
And if I type IPconfig,
I get the same information we just saw,
and if I type IPconfig /all,
I get the same information we just in PowerShell.
As I said, PowerShell will execute
the IPconfig command with no trouble,
but we can do this from either of those interfaces.
So, two command line options,
one graphical option gives us either individually
or in a combined way the opportunity
to understand what versioning of IP address
we may be running, IPv4 and/or IPv6,
and tells us whether it is a static or a dynamic assignment,
and if it is dynamic, points to the DHCP server
that is giving out those addresses.
We may or may not have control of it
in visibility into it directly,
it may be someone else in the organization
that is managing that,
but at least we know that we’re using
a DHCP sponsored to dynamic address
and then if we choose to make it static,
we have options to do that, as well.
So, this is how we can optimize your understanding
of just the basics around IP addresses.
A lot of more to know about that,
but if you’re interested in finding out more about it,
you could always join me over at ITProTV,
we teach you how to understand IP addresses
and thousands of other things that come in handy,
not only for you in your private life,
working with your computers at home,
but in business every day as an IT professional,
working with symptoms and maintaining them.
We’re the place where you can get all that information
and we’re always creating new content,
just like this episode and this series,
we’re always putting it together
and making it available for you.
All you need to do, stop by and hang out with me,
and spend some time,
and I’m going to show your all sorts of cool stuff.
We’re to call this episode done for now.
I’m going to wish you happy servering,
and I’ll see you soon.