need basic info for LAN configuration
I'm looking for some basic intro material for setting up a home network. I've found several tutorials and how-to's, but none that really address my situation.
For one thing, I have a router, so I don't need to know about setting up one machine as an internet gateway (most of the articles I've found are old enough that they assume people will have a hub or switch, and a dedicated gateway server).
For another thing, I've configured the router to use DHCP to assign addresses to the three machines on this network, so precedures that assume fixed IP addresses get confusing. I'm not sure how to identify the various machines to each other if their addresses change. Of course, I could switch to static IP addresses, but I don't want to do that if the only reason is that I don't know how to work with DHCP, since I know that can be done.
Also, I'm currently running Linux on the two machines that actually get used (the third is an old Win95 machine that is on its way to PC heaven, as soon as I retrieve some data from it). That means I don't really care about having Windows shares, so I don't necessarily have to use Samba (I think). Again, I don't mind using it, but I'd prefer not to be forced to do it because of my ignorance of a better way. I'd think getting two Linux boxes to talk to each other would be pretty simple, but I haven't been able to get there yet.
I think all I need is some basic information, but I'm having a hard time finding it for some reason. Any suggestions?