Hi
Plug the switch into the router,plug the computers and printers into the switch.
1.
You need to take a look at the private class range your router is giving out the one ethernet port you mentioned, so power on the router and enter the administration which should hopefully be via http, login to the router and check that dhcp is on and what range the router is offering the LAN, ie 10.0.0.0/8 or 192.168.0.0/24. Check the address that the router has assigned it's one ethernet port that you speak of, it will probably be 10.0.0.2 or 192.168.1.1....it will probably be in the LAN section or such. This is the address you will assign as the default gateway on the machines.
2.
After this go to the machines and under the TCP/IP properties enter the default gateway address and assign each machine an address in the range from 192.168.1.0-192.168.0.254 or 10.0.0.2-10.0.0.254(just for conveniance sake) and set the subnet mask as 255.255.255.0 if it is the 192.168.0.1 or 255.0.0.0 if it is the 10.0.0.0 address range.....
Take note those settings are under the manual, not automatic.
3.
Click OK and then attempt to ping from the machines to the IP assigned in the router admin area as Default Gateway (192.168.0.1 or 10.0.0.2).
Hope that sorts you out.
This take into consideration that you want static IP's not auto IP,s because you say you have printers.
BTW, the cable from switch to router must be a crossover cable if you connect from normal switchport to router , or, if you use the uplink port on the switch then you can use a normal ethernet cable, some switches do this automatically.
Might aswell add this in since I'm here. To verify your config, goto start menu-run-type "cmd"-the terminal opens and type "ipconfig", here you shall see what you typed in the properties box.
The command to type in to set the settings manually from the command line is:
ipconfig /ip [ip address to set] [subnet mask]
ipconfig /dg [default gateway]
verify with "ipconfig"
End by typing " ping [Default Gateway address]
Successful ping means full communication to the telkom router.
The switch in between just repeats your signal basically, it doesn't need an IP, unless for administrative purposes you want to telnet in or via Aux to admin the switch.
So just to end it off, the five machines could look like this
IP.................... DG
1. 192.168.0.5 255.255.255.0
2. 192.168.0.6 255.255.255.0
3. 192.168.0.7 255.255.255.0
4 192.168.0.8 255.255.255.0
5.192.168.0.9 255.255.255.0
or
1. 10.0.0.5 255.255.255.0
2.10.0.0.6 255.255.255..0
3.10.0.0.7 255.255.255.0
4.10.0.0.0.8 255.255.255.0
5.10.0.0.9 255.255.255.0
For the 10 example, the router might have it set to 255.0.0.0 in which case replace it with that in the ten example above,check that.
All machine set with Default gateway found in router admin page, eg: 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.0.2 most likely, could even be 192.168.1.1 in which case replace the 0 with a 1(192.168.1.5) in the 5 examples above.
