FAQ

Does Amahi require to be running as a DHCP server?

No. You can optionally turn off your router's DHCP server for your LAN and let the Amahi HDA give out the DHCP leases for the systems in your network. Some people are understandably hesitant to do this, so we made it optional.

Thousands of people use the Amahi HDA as their DHCP and caching DNS server 24x7, so we have solid proof that it's reliable for continuous use. In fact many people prefer to use it because it's more reliable than their router.

You have several options:

  1. Use your HDA's DHCP and caching DNS server: This is the recommended configuration to have the all the features of the apps that come with Amahi.
  2. Use only your HDA's caching DNS server: To do this, change the DNS that your router gives out in the DHCP requests (or change your clients) to your HDA's IP address. By pointing your router DNS to the IP address of the Amahi HDA you will get a lot of the functionality all of the machines in your network that use it. With this setup, everything will work, except:
    • Assigning of static IPs in your network settings will not work
    • Network booting your systems from your HDA will not work.
    • Automatic DHCP naming of machines in your network will not work (the Amahi DHCP is configured to automatically allocate DNS names for machines that request their name via DHCP).
    • Your Amahi HDA-provided domain will not work inside your own network. This means short URLs will not work in this configuration. Please use the long form url (with the full domain name you chose for your network).
  3. No change in DHCP or DNS in your router: You can use the desktop in your HDA and do most every features on your Amahi HDA, as the HDA will use its own DNS server. Other machines in the network will not take advantage of most features in the the Amahi HDA. They will probably see the file server in the HDA, though it may only be accessible with an IP address, not a name. The AmahiiTunes server and UPnP server may be visible to clients, however, this is not tested/supported.

Updated over 1 year ago

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