And this is for the LAN? Any router can set its WAN IP, but LAN is less common.
I'm pretty sure a crossover will be necessary to do WAN->Dell, but in the meantime we can work on the 3 LAN ports solution - really shouldn't be different from what we just tried but I really think it should work. Here is an example, you may change the IP addresses.
Keep Dell at 192.168.0.1
Set router to 192.168.0.130
Disable router's DHCP server
Set comp1 to 192.168.0.140
Set comp2 to 192.168.0.145
comp1 and comp2 should have 192.168.0.1 set as default gateway, and everything should use subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Now, all we need is to be able to ping between all of these (except possibly the router). If that is successful we're almost done. If not, please post the router brand and model.
Alternate solutions to this are get a crossover (fairly likely to work) and buy a hub or switch instead of router (will definitely work).
Comments
I'm pretty sure a crossover will be necessary to do WAN->Dell, but in the meantime we can work on the 3 LAN ports solution - really shouldn't be different from what we just tried but I really think it should work. Here is an example, you may change the IP addresses.
Keep Dell at 192.168.0.1
Set router to 192.168.0.130
Disable router's DHCP server
Set comp1 to 192.168.0.140
Set comp2 to 192.168.0.145
comp1 and comp2 should have 192.168.0.1 set as default gateway, and everything should use subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Now, all we need is to be able to ping between all of these (except possibly the router). If that is successful we're almost done. If not, please post the router brand and model.
Alternate solutions to this are get a crossover (fairly likely to work) and buy a hub or switch instead of router (will definitely work).