Hi I have a home network (client/server) with windows 2000 Server and 7 workstations. (The workstations are NT/2000/XP pro) I have had some intermittent problems with accessing shared files, folders and printers. Also the network slows up unexpectantly. This lead me to belive the may be a problem with DNS. my current setup is with static ip addresses in the range 100.100.100.x and subnet 255.255.255.0 is this what’s causing me problems I have a satilite internet connection (the satellite connects to a modem/router). My ISP told me to setup all my computers like this: Ip: 10.93.98.194 - 255 Subnet: 255.255.255.240 Default gateway: 10.93.98.193 DNS: 192.986.129.30 I have installed a smoothwall firewall which currently acts as a router and my DNS server. It basically has the setup the ISP gave me on one NIC (the Red/External Interface) and this setup on the other (Green/Internal) NIC. Ip: 100.100.100.1 - 255 Subnet: 255.255.255.0 Deafult gateway: 100.100.100.1 DNS: 100.100.100.1 Now this all works fine for web browsing but browsing the network has issues. One of the biggest problems is if I logon to the network on an XP machine and leave the computer on for about 4 hours then I browse the network through My network places>Entire Network etc if I click a computer to access its shared resources it pauses for ages. In the task manager it shows up as 'Not Responding'. After about 30secs to a minute it prompts me for a username and password? This doesn’t make any sense On top of this If I enter the username and password I logged on with it tells me that the username I have used is the same one I have logged on with and windows has already tried this. But if I enter a different username and password it immediately lets me browse the shared resources. This makes even less sense??? All permissions are set correctly as everything works fine after I have just logged on so what is causing this, I’ve searched high and low on the internet and the only possible reason I can find is that I am using my ISP's, DNS and not my servers DNS. Does smoothwall send all DNS stuff to my ISP's DNS server? Is this slowing down my network? I went here: http://www.petri.co.il/install_and_configure_w2k_dns_server.htm This gave me a guide to setting up DNS on my server which I followed through. I set my workstations to use my DNS server at 100.100.100.3 (my servers IP) instead on my ISP's. I also set my server to use its self for DNS. Rebooted server and a workstation, logged in fine, tried to login on the workstation in it takes forever. (I waited about 10mins then gave up) Are these to completely unrelated problems? Sorry this is a long post, but this is driving me insane Please help me; I have spent 3 days trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong. Any help appreciated, thanks in advanced

The problem is you IP addresses are not within the private network range. Your router will direct all requests to the internet! The easiest solution is to setup your router to handle DHCP. Then set each computer to automatically get IP addresses.