apache/router problems

[methodtwo]

hi there,
I'm wanting to set up apache, i have a router that i have a wired connection to and the router is in turn connected to a cable modem.Now the cable modem gets an i.p address from my i.s.p dynamically and the router assigns i.p addresses dynamically to the home LAN internally.The only thing i found in the router config about static I.P addresses said that i would have to get a static I.P address from my I.SP.Am i right in thinking that i would have to get a static I.P address for my modem and then configure the router to assign a private static address?, so the router still uses NAT to talk to the outside world?.I don't see why i can't just have one static address assigned by the router internally and still have the modem get a dynamic I.P address.Thankx in advance

[alex.blackbit]

what you describe here should be seen as two separated things.

the one thing is the ip address you have on the internet, which is apparently dynamically assigned.
if you want to reach your apache from the internet in a convenient way, you will have to use a dynamic dns service like no-ip.com or dyndns.org.
most home routers have support for that built it. if yours does not, you can run a daemon on your gentoo box, they are in the portage tree.

the other thing is your internal network. if your router documentation does not explicitly say that you can use static ip addresses in your internal net that does not necessarily mean that it is not possible. can you modify the range of ip addresses that the dhcp server in your router assigns? if you use the private subnet 192.168.0.0 or similar you can limit the assigned addresses to the range of 2-200 and use the remaining ones in a static way. just assign e.g. 192.168.0.201 to your gentoo box and set the right standard gateway and maybe the dns server entries by hand.

this guide does not describe what you want to do since you do not want to build a router, but it will provide useful information anyway.