Can a Mac take 2 IPs?

Need on another LAN too....

[SEOMike]

Most computers in my office are PCs. We have two MACs. Recently, we gained access to our network operating center for FTP reasons. Our NOC (which houses our webservers) is on a completely different IP range. Windows allows you to set up two IPs so you can be a member of two nets at the same time. Does Mac OS X allow this too? It would SIGNIFICANTLY cut down the Mac guys' FTP time if we could get a second IP in there.

What if we used Virtual PC XP... does it allow this function?

Thanks in advance.

[whoisgregg]

We recently added another incoming DSL line to our office and have a similar setup as you describe. I connect to the internet through one connection and our web serving happens on the other. I can ssh/ftp/whatever into our servers without leaving the LAN. However, my Mac doesn't have a second IP address assigned to it, its simply on the same switch (and IP range) as our servers.

I'm sure we can figure out a way to connect the two machines. Here's the first place you probably want to look:
Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network > Show: Network Port Configurations

You can probably just duplicate your "Built-in Ethernet" then go to Show: "Built-in Ethernet copy" (or whatever you named it) and put in the settings for the other router and it would all just work. I just did it here and it worked as expected. Let me know how that works for you. :)

[timster]

For reasons similar to yours, my PowerBook has two IP's: one on Ethernet and the other on wireless. Might that help?

[SEOMike]

one on Ethernet and the other on wireless. Might that help?

Well, it might. We DO have a WLAN in the office... but it uses DHCP to assign a local IP address, then we use the NOC name server and a NOC address (over another WLAN) to determine weather or not a packet stays in our LAN, in our NOC or is destined for the internet... I guess I could configure the Mac to hook right into our WAP in the NOC... Hmmmmmm....

I tried to assign two IPs to Virtual PC but that didn't work. Apparantly it acts like a windows system inside a Mac box and gets it's OWN IP from the Mac box. So there's no configuring it around the Mac-Windows interface.

Guess I'll have to go with a WLAN card and configure it to hit the AP.

Thanks for you help.

[timster]

The ethernet/wireless thing is just a cheap little trick that a Web Application monkey (me) thought up.

It is possible to set up a Mac OS X box with multiple IP addresses. (The following quote is talking about Web serving, but I reckon it's not limited to that:

Mac OS X also allows multihoming and IP aliasing. ... IP aliasing allows a network administrator to assign multiple IP addresses to a single network interface.

[developer.apple.com ]

[whoisgregg]

How did duplicating the Ethernet port configuration work for you? I'm looking at the Network pane of System preferences and it looks like you could configure multiple modems, multiple ethernet, multiple wireless, bluetooth, firewire, "6 to 4" (whatever that is) and just about everything else with all of the connections active simultaneously. I've just never done it before and am real curious if that's the solution.

[SEOMike]

whoisgregg-

Trying to duplicate the ethernet card and assigning it two IPs shut down the internet connection all together.

I think I'm going to go with the wireless connection.

Thanks for the idea though.