Ip sharing

So, my router is set for IP sharing and I myself don't want this. When I try to change it it just wont broadcast. Can you guys help?

IP sharing is exaclty as it sounds. A single IP is shared between two devices, usually on normal IPv4 networks a single machine gets a unique IP to assigned to the hardwares MAC address.

With IP sharing the data gets to round about where it needs to be and can either be forwarded based on MAC address or broadcast to all connected, with those who didn't request it rejecting it and those who did accepting it.

IP sharing does not cause any problems to the average user. However IP sharing does prevent port forwarding, so if you are using a IP shared connection you can not host your own servers that require dedicated ports (such as Web or Game servers).

Why IP sharing? well as you may be aware the IPv4 standard (4 groups of up to 3 digits groups eg xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is running out of numbers (lol sounds so dumb put that way) for the amount of devices connected to ISPs.

Though the standard IPv6 is starting to FINALLY take foot (8 groups of 4 hexidecimal for example 2001:0db8:96a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:7334 dont't worry it can be abreviated in some cases) IPv6 does solve the issues of the lack of combinations with IPv4, it just hasn't really taken foot yet.

IP sharing can be initiated within a private network, however is rarley used.