someone told me to use a router because my isp wont charge 4.95 a month extra for each ip since the router splits the ip. so i got a d link di604 4 port with wan. im sure if i hooked it up i can get it working fine for all 3 computers, but i need to do something specific. im running a webserver where the url is my ip and i dont want my ip to change since id have to update links on the site, and ive got my ip memorized. my ip changed for some reason the other day but i had a screen shot of winipcfg saved so i put all the numbers in manually and got my ip back. i was told a router uses the same numbers for each computer except one number in either the ip address or the subnet mask is different. my question is....how would i go about using this ip in the router and having my computer have the exact ip i need (if the ip address is different for each computer..im sure if the subnet mask is what changes it probably wont matter because the site is just the ip. i hope that made sense also, in the future if i add more computers will i still be able to use my current switch as long as i use it after the router since it can probably only take whatever ip the router gives it to work with? or will it just pull random ips that will cost money?

depends on the config software that came with the router but you are looking for IP forwarding or NAT best to read up on it!

I just check it out and it's called NAT(Network Address Translation) need to use that to take your IP address that you remembered for your web server and associate it with the internal ip address giving by your router

got it working ok...thanks for the help :o)