static ip lan

I have win 2003 STD and a few machines. Trying to set up a static ip.
My physical setup is dsl plugged into router and patch cables going to server and clients. Is this correct? Someone has told me to put router behind the gateway.(what does this mean?) DHCP (server) is working serving internal ips to the clients.
When I go online to check out my ip I get an unrecognized ip.
I have set up the given static ip in the router but no luck.

Any help would be appreciated.

re: static ip lan

Recab, thanks for posting, there are a lot of good, fundamental questions in there that we can help you clear up.

A static IP on your Windows 2003 box will appear when you get on that Windows 2003 box and run the command 'ipconfig' in the command line. It is your IP on your LAN (your LAN comprises all the boxes that are located logically 'behind' your DSL router). When you go online to check your IP, what is being returned is the IP of the DSL router - the IP that your ISP has assigned to you (not the static IP of the Win2k3 box). This is why most small networks are able to be set up as 192.168.x.x IP ranges, because those aren't able to be directly seen on the internet (so they can be duplicated, just not on the same LAN).

A gateway is the device that allows communication from the current LAN out to anther network (in this case the internet), so your gateway is your DSL router. There are a few different setups that are possible here, but what would happen would be more devices sitting immediately behind your DSL router to perform various other tasks - a box to create a DMZ so that you can have a web server, a box to act as a firewall, even another router or switch to allow a larger network behind your DSL connection.

From here, we need to clarify your issue a bit more - can you go into the Win2k3 box, open a command line, and type 'ipconfig' and tell me if that is the proper static IP? If it is, what are you attempting to do with that static IP? Get a connection in from the internet? Connect another computer to it?

re: static ip lan

The ip of the server (win2003) is 192.168.2.2
The reason I'm inquiring is that I lease server space for hosting of websites and when we log in there, if the ip has changed, they lock us out so I thought if we communicated thru a static ip things would go smoothly. I was provided with a string of static ip's 64.xxx.xxx.64/29 from the isp but don't know how to implement them.
I understand that static ip's are helpful when wanting to communicate with a specific machine from the net into the lan but don't know if it works going out.
Thanks

re: static ip lan

Aha. That makes sense. So now we need to figure out what device is creating the 192.x local subnet. You should be able to configure the 'internet facing' interface on that box to have the 64.x static.

The first device we should look at is the 'gateway' to your LAN. The cord that brings the internet in I believe you said is DSL plugged into a router. Is the DSL line going into a DSL modem? Or just into your router? What we want to look at is the connection coming out of either the DSL modem, or your router - whichever is first (if you don't have a separate DSL modem).