With your DHCP set to start at 192.168.2.10, assign static addresses to your WHS and other devices at some number greater than 10. Otherwise your particular router may ignore everything below 10 and not allow access to the internet.
Personally, I start DHCP at 100 and assign several static addresses above 100.
This is wrong. If your DHCP server (usually built into your router) is set to start assigning addresses at 192.168.2.10, then you do
not want to manually configure IP addresses in the same range. Your DHCP server doesn't know about those manually configured computers, and will happily hand out the same IP address in a DHCP lease. The result will be computers that don't connect reliably to your network, and it's a difficult problem to diagnose.
If you're going to assign fixed IP addresses to computers on your home network, there are two ways to do it.
First, you can assign that address manually. In that case, you have to make sure that you set that computer correctly. The IP address has to be in the same range (in this case 192.168.2.###) as the other computers on your network, but outside the IP range that the DHCP server itself will use, and you have to set DNS servers, WINS servers, etc. manually on that computer as well.
The alternative, if your DHCP server supports it, is what the OP did, which is create a DHCP reservation. In this case, you tie a specific IP address in your DHCP server's range to a specific piece of hardware (as identified by
MAC address ), and the DHCP server always assigns the same IP address to that piece of hardware. All other configuration parameters will be the same for all computers.
DHCP reservations are the preferred solution in a home network. If you need to change settings for your network (say your ISP changes the IP addresses of their name servers) you do it once.
I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
