MacBook says theres another computer with the same ip address

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Level 1

4 points

MacBook says theres another computer with the same ip address

So this problem has happened before but it went away. I just opened my laptop from sleep and it says it can't conect to the Internet because there is another computer with the same ip address on the network. I restarted my laptop and the message popped up again. So I'm guessing I have to change my IP address. I looked online on how to do it and it doesn't seem exactly safe and if I screw somthing up, I don't want to pay apple to fix. I figured i might ask other people with macs on what to do. Any suggestions?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 24, 2012 5:49 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

141,126 points

Oct 24, 2012 6:00 PM in response to serbgirl40

serbgirl40 wrote:

... So I'm guessing I have to change my IP address.

Not necessarily. It means your Mac has not been used on that router for so long that it assigned your Mac's IP address to another device. It will automatically issue your Mac a new one.

To change this you might want to reconfigure your router to issue DHCP leases with a longer duration. Unless this problem is nagging you constantly, just ignore it.

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