I have a Linksys BEFW11S4 WAP Router with two machines connected to the wired swtich: a linux box (Mandrake 10.0) in port 1 and a WinXP laptop in port 2. The DHCP server is enabled with the starting IP address at 192.168.1.100. On the linux box I added these lines to /etc/hosts
192.168.1.100 mylinuxbox.com
192.168.1.101 mywindozebox.com
The laptop does not have a hosts file.
On the laptop the linuxbox shows up as Mdkgroup, mylinuxbox, (shares) - all via samba.
This setup works. However, I would like to disable the DHCP server (in the router) and have the router assign static IP addresses for the LAN (not the WAN). On the DHCP tab of the router's configuation page there is the option to disable the DHCP Server. If I turn this off will my linux box (at least) still see the router? (I don't want to turn it off and have neither machine see the router. I want to avoud resetting the router.) How do I set up the DCHP Server and my computers to use static IP addresses for the LAN?

Thanks in advance.

First change both computers to use static addresses THEN
turn off the DHCP server.

In windows right click "my network places", select properties,
select TCP/IP, and select Properties again. Enter IP address
and subnet mask at a minimum.

In Linux use ifconfig or your distribution's network config scripts.

And after you have the Ip adresses set and you have turned off the dhcp server you have to assign the default gateway (this functionality is what you called ("seeing the router"). In your case the default gateway you want will be 192.168.1.1.

If this setup is connected to the outside world .. I would suggest don't do it.
You will have a mess on your hands .. you will have to configure the DNS on each machine by hand .. and if the service provider "ever" changed
that on you ... you will have to do this whole thing all over again..
as a matter of fact there would be no way of finding the dns .. unless you went back in and looked at your linksys router, it willl know .. but your
computers won't :-))

Not using DHCP has to be for a very good reason .. and I don't think you should disable it to solve some minro configuration issue.

Thanks for the replies.
I think I will leave things as they are. The main reason why I was looking at static ip was that the DHCP server on the router assigns the first local ip to whichever machine it sees first (ie. whichever machine is turned on first.) Since my /etc/hosts uses the local ip (192.168.1.*) to assign the dns names to the local machines, it is important to know which ip will be assigned to which machine. Since my network has only 2 machines this is not a real issue, more a nuisance which I can live with.

with a full-fledged dhcp server, the way you solve this is by setting an address reservation, ensuring that a given MAC address will always receive the same IP. I'm not sure you have that possibility with the Linksys dhcp server, it might be worth it to investigate, though.