Does your installation require the use of DHCP or static IP addresses? Do you need to set up DNS and a Gateway so that your HAL can synchronize its internal clock with an NTP Server? Never fear, it's as simple as can be. But there are a few things you need to know as well as a few issues that could arise:
note: If your HAL is located behind a router and Halogen is unable to find the HAL, check with your IT department to find out if the router has NAT (Network Address Translation) enabled. If not, enable it and try again.
note: HAL does not allow more than one IP address on the same subnet. It considers this to be a conflict and Halogen will display an error message if you attempt to add a second IP address on a particular subnet that HAL is already using.
For example, if HAL has an existing static IP address configured as 192.168.1.25 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0, the subnet portion of the IP address is 192.168.1.0 and the host portion is 0.0.0.25. In this example, Halogen will not allow you to configure another IP address on the same subnet, so will display an error dialog if you attempt to add, for example, a new static IP address of 192.168.1.26 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
tip: To change a static IP address to another value, you must first delete the existing IP address and then add the desired IP address. This is necessary if you are changing the host portion of an address since HAL does not allow two IP addresses to have the same subnet, as mentioned in the Note above.
If the DHCP server on the network supports setting the Default Gateway and DNS, the HAL will use that information. This is important if you want your HAL to synchronize its internal clock with an NTP server.
If the DHCP server doesn’t support the Gateway and DNS, or the HAL is on a network without a DHCP server, both the Default Gateway and at least the Preferred DNS address need to be configured. The Alternate DNS address is there as a backup in case the Preferred one is unavailable for some reason.