Stop waiting for an IP address and make Ubuntu boot up faster
If you use an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to access your network, you might find that Ubuntu spends a few seconds during each boot acquiring an Internet address. This will be characterized by a long pause while nothing seems to be happening. Therefore, one way to provide an instant speed boost is to give your computer a static IP address.
However, to assign a static address, you'll need to find out what IP address range your router (or other DHCP server) uses. This can be discovered by looking at the router's configuration software. Sometimes, this is accessed via a web browser. Look for the section of the web interface headed DHCP Configuration or similar.
Normally, IPv4 local area network addresses are in the 192.168.x.x range, where x.x can be any series of numbers from 1.1 to 255.255. For instance, you may find that your router uses the 192.168.1.2-255 range.
In this case, assigning a static IP address that will work with the router is simply a matter of choosing an IP address in this range. However, this router may hand out addresses sequentially from 2 upward, so it's best to choose an address it’s unlikely to reach, even if you happen to have many computers connected to the network. Starting at 50 is a good idea, so you could assign the address 192.168.1.50.
Don't forget that when defining static IP addresses, you'll need to manually supply the gateway,
subnet, and DNS addresses. In the example, the gateway would be 192.168.1.1 (the address of the LAN interface on the router), and the subnet would be 255.255.255.0. The DNS address on a small home network will probably be the same as the gateway address, because the router will usually be set to forward DNS requests by default. This isn’t always the case, though, so be sure to check.
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