UH what? You'll have one and only one IP address no matter how many devices you have connected to the modem. THAT modem will have one IP that is unique to you and will never change no matter what device you connect to it. If you want to connect more than one device to that modem and use them at the same time then you need to buy a router and set up a home network. Within that network you will need to set up individual network IP address to each device. It's the job of the router to encode the data together and then send it on to your modem and likewise for decoding incoming data and ensuring it is sent back to the correct device. Your ISP won't know what device is connected since the only IP it will ever see is your modems one and not the individual devices connected to your network.
Oh, so thats why the cable companies advertise something along the lines of 'maximum of 3,5,10 IPs' with your 3/5/10Mbit connections?
The PS3 will grab the first free IP it can find on your network, if you habve no deives turned on at that time then it will grab the first logical IP on your network irrespecitive of weather or not you have a PC or other device that shares that IP. It has nothing to do with being 'aggressive' ANY device will do that. So you can either chose to leave it as it is, change the PS3's IP address using the PS3 network set up option or change the IP address of any PCs or devices that may conflict by going in to network options in windows. The easiest option however is to turn on ALL devices that use the network and THEN turn on the PS3 and then run it's automatic network set up option, it will then grab the next free IP it can find, it will not just grab the first IP it can find and then set about booting what ever other device that shares that IP off the network.
THe PS3, is 'aggressive' when it comes to connecting with WiFi, I used the word AGGRESSIVE, because most other 'wifi' devices, will attempt to connect to ANY IP, on the router its connected to. The PS3, is 'stubborn' if you want to call it that, it WANTS to only connect to the 1st IP, regardless if its available or not.
I have no idea why you would ever want to connect, disconnect power up, power down or do any of the faffing about listed in the above quote, especially to set up network IP addresses. I have 5 computers, a PS3, a Wii and a DS all capable of using my network at the same time and I didn't have to do ANY of that pointless stuff listed above to get them set up when I first got my broadband installed. I assigned them their own IP address from within their own network set up options.
You've never had to deal with any connections issues obviously.
It also depends on WHAT cable company you go through.
Mine sucks, Thusly I have to go through a SUCKY method of getting everything to hook up.
The cable company DOES in many ways 'give you' multiple IPs, and thats only a 'lamans' term for it.
Even though YOU are getting an 'ip' from your router, which is nothing more then 'adding' a few digits to the end of it, SOME cable companies have this nasty habit, where they ONLY want up to 3 devices connected to the router/modem. And since the cable companies knows EXACTLY what devices you have connected to your router, they have 'hardware' in place, so that the only way you can add in new hardware (after say, your first time installing it) is to, Shut off the power to the devices, because the router for instance, wants to only give out 3 IPs, even though theres a 4th device, but the only way to sometimes 'update' the router, is to shut it off. And even then, the Modem will sometimes do the same thing with the router.
I guess if you want to call it something, you could say, that hte cable company has to authorize with the ROUTER, that a device is trying to connect, and the only way for the cable company to do this is to FORCE them to authorize it, by shutting off the modem, then turn it back on, which FORCES the cable company to authorize that the modem is on, that its supposed to be recieing internet, and of course, is working correctly...
If yoru with a good cable company, you don't have to worry about all that shit, because they don't care, connect 900000 pcs to 1 router, they don't give a rats ass.
Others do.
Mine does,
Hell they even have anti-P2P policies in place, that effectively gives me a connection worse than a 56k modem, when I'm using p2p software for legit reasons. (PATCHING CERTAIN GAMES, one good example of this was, WOW)
So with 3 IPs, and 4 devices, the ps3 and another device will constantly 'take it' from each other.
Uh no they won't. In general the first device to power on with an assigned IP will keep that IP. The second device will in general return an error saying that the assigned IP is already being used and will then just sit there waiting for you to give it a new IP.
Like I said before, you obviously haven't had issues with connecting devices.
Heres a clue.
One time, My router was only giving 1 IP address between 2 pcs.
Everytime my mother wanted to get online, I'd get booted.
Everytime I tried to do something online, she'd get booted.
Effectively we kept playing tag!
MY pc stole her IP and knocked her off, her pc stole my IP and knocked me off.
Then you throw in a PS3 in the mix, and ORIGINAL MODELS tend to want to get the '1st' ip, and not the 'first available' ip.
It also doesn't help when you have people constantly trying to hack your wifi.
