Network Basics

[teknovision]

Hi all!!

I've been trying to get my head around how to structure my clients network and I'm going absolutely bonkers, one minute I'm happy, the next I'm confused!!

I would like to network 4 workstations (XP), 2 workstations (Mac) to a server (win small business 2003) and give all of these machines access to the internet via a hardware firewall. I rather not have the server act as a DHCP server as that would add further complexity and risk - I rather keep it to file-sharing at this stage.

Correct me if I'm wrong please.. . All the workstations should be set to DHCP with Manual IP addresses BUT I can't for the life of me understand what the gateway, dns, subnetmask should be on the firewall and the server. Does anyone have any network diagrams that could help me understand how this works or, easy to understand tutorials/tips?

Any help would be very very much appreciated, I feel like I'm swimming in a sea of total MS terminology!!!

Thanks for any help.. .

Phil :confused:

[hayne]

I'm not sure what you have as your "hardware firewall", but if it is one of the usual combo boxes that acts as a router & switch, it likely also can act as a DHCP server. If so, the easiest (and very common) configuration is just to have all your computers connected by Ethernet to the various ports on the router/switch box. Each computer woudl set its gateway to be the router's IP address. The file server machine would be just like all the other machines.