We have recently installed DSL in the office, with all clients including the server picking up an IP address from DHCP on the DSL router. I need to setup online reservations that will be handled by the server and in order to do this i need to assign a static external ip address to it. How can i retain connection locally and have external traffic find the server. I am at a loss.

What are the online reservations for?

They will work in conjuction with a reservation software package that we use at the hotel? The online service will be hosted on our server which will be setup by the vendor, the reservations will then come directly to us via the web service and be logged on the server in house. Hope this makes sense.

Ok I think I understand. You will likely want to use a highspeed internet router. On the router, you assign the static IP assigned by your ISP to the external connection (WAN side). Use DHCP on the internal side (LAN) and forward the appropriate port (if you're using web service, that would be port 80) to the internal IP of your server. NOTE: I would statically assign an IP in the range of the DHCP to the server. You probably don't want to have that IP change and it could with DHCP. This would give you your LAN/WAN connectivity plus allow you to connect to the online reservation software. If you're not 100% sure how to do this you may want to conuslt with another hotel using the same software that already have it setup and running.

Thanks Curt for the advice.