I've got a small LAN with M$ W98 peer-peer PCs running NetBEUI and a dial-up ISDN router providing internet access. The router (D-Link DI-106) also provides a DHCP Server so I don't assign static IPs to the PCs cos the router does that dynamically - the only static IP which is set in each PC is that of the router as 'TCP/IP Gateway'. I've now added a Red Hat 7.2 box. The only server function of this box will eventually be for Telenet/Ssh. When I installed RH I gave it a static IP address (within the router's DHCP range) and now I can't seem to change or remove that address. I can ping in to the RH box using the original IP but if I change the IP in /etc/hosts, I can't ping in with the new IP. I've tried stopping and starting the network via /etc/rc.d/init.d/network but it makes no difference. /etc/dhcp/dhcpcd-eth0.info always shows the original IP. a) Should it be necessary for the RH box to be assigned a Static IP when the router operates as DHCP Server? The RH Network Config (neat) is set up to "Automatically obtain IP address settings with dchp" and the Static IP settings are blanked-out. b) Will any use of static IPs interefere with the DHCP service? eg: will they reduce the security benefit of DHCP? In the W98s you have to specify 'Obtain IP addr automatically' (DHCP) OR provide static IP + Subnet - don't see how you can use both together.

Without noing anything about Linux I can tell you that you shouldn´t have the RH´s static ip within the DHCP-range. Then you can end up with duplicate adresses. If the RH is used as a server it should be configured with a static adress outside of the dhcp-range otherwise it could have dhcp as well. The gateway adress could also be sent to the win98 clients through dchp.