98/XP Connection Question

[bulldawg]

Here is the setup.

One Win98 SE machine.
One WinXP Pro Machine.
SMC Barricade Router
Surfboard Modem for Comcast Cable Internet.
Linksys 10/100 cards in each machine.
Only TCP/IP bound to both cards


Both machines connect to the internet through router with automatic ip addresses with no problem.

Win98 sees and communicates fine with XP machine.

XP machine sometimes will see and communicate with 98 machine. Sometimes not.

Question is this: Can I, and would it be a good idea to, assign static ip addresses for the LAN and still use an automatic ip address for the internet?

 

[astroview]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the router have a static IP assigned to it from your ISP and then the computers behind it have dynamic IPs? So then it shouldn't matter what IPs are behind the router, static or dynamic unless you want to configure your network in a certain way?

Ok I didn't really answer your question, but I think it shouldn't hurt either way. Try hard cording the IPs and see if then there is no LAN issue regarding seeing each other.