We have 4 standalone PCs, one of which has an ADSL connection. We want to hook everybody up to this and I know that a 4 port router/gateway/switch thingie would do the job quite simply and cheaply. Wired is fine, don't need wireless. I am thinking of a Netgear 834. One of the remote sites we connect to requires a fixed IP. Question - does the router have its own fixed IP, whilst using DHCP to allocate addresses to the 4 PCs? Or if you choose DHCP, does that include the router itself, too? Sorry if this is a stoopid question, I'm pretty good with most stuff but networking is a bit of an unknown... Thanks CW

the router will get a public address on the outside interface from your dsl provider it will also act as your dns, dhcp server. whether or not this is a fixed address depends on the agreement you have with your provider on the inside, the router will have a fixed private address, something like 192.168.1.1. but you can change this, and it is fixed dhcp range will start at 192.168.1.100 or similar, so your PCs will be 100,101, 102 and 103 that is how my linksys is , I suppose others will be similar