Configuring your Network Interface Card (NIC) for a Static IP Address with Windows XP. Click on the thumbnails below to look at the screenshot in full size.

1. Open My Computer. On the left side of the window, look for My Network Places under Other Places. Once you have found it, right click on it and choose Properties from the bottom of the menu. This will open up the Network Connections window. Proceed to Step 2.
   
   
2. In the Network Connections window, right click once on Local Area Connection or whatever network interface device you are using to connect to the FREESCO router. Click on the Properties option from the bottom of the menu. This will open up the Local Area Connection Properties window. Proceed to Step 3.
   
   
3. Now, in the window labeled “This connection uses the following items:”, click on Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) then click on the Properties button. This will open the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties window. Proceed to Step 4.
   
   
4. In the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties window, change the selected item from Obtain an IP address automatically to Use the following IP address. Pick an IP address in the same address range as your FREESCO router's internal LAN, but stay outside the DHCP range in case you've also enabled the DHCP server in your FREESCO setup. In case you've enabled the caching DNS service in your FREESCO setup, then you can enable the IP address of your FREESCO router in the DNS entries, otherwise use the IP addresses of the name server(s) of your ISP.

The next table contains some details about each entry:

What	Description
IP address	the address for this WinXP client, select this from the range you have (been) assigned for clients. In this example 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.40 is reserved for clients. We have picked 192.168.0.12 for this client. Take care never to assign the same IP address to two different clients. Using static IP's requires a bit more house keeping for the network administrator (that's you ).
Subnet mask	the mask for this network. If you have only your FREESCO box and some clients then leave this to the default of 255.255.255.0. A primer on TCP/IP and netmasks can be found here.
Default gateway	this is the IP address of your FREESCO box on the LAN side.

Enter the network information into the corresponding text fields then click on the OK button to apply these changes. After you have clicked OK on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties window and closed it, click OK on the Local Area Connection Properties window to close it as well. Now close any other remaining windows associated with this process. Your Windows XP computer has now been setup for a static IP address.