some really basic networking questions

[dep]

greets, gang.

i'm making myself crazy (crazier?) here trying to put suse 7.3 on a 
thinkpad 240 (i got a couple of these refurbed for cheap, and i love 
'em; setting up one for my wife and one for me).

in an effort -- it may be a fantasy -- to create what amounts to p'n'p 
networking, i decided to experiment with dhcp. my efforts have been, 
thusfar, a dismal failure. this is perhaps assisted in yast2's 
insistence on changing everything back once it's been changed by 
hand.

what it comes down to is this: if i specify an IP address in 
/etc/hosts (in this case, 192.168.0.6), it all seems to work, and 
ifconfig reports an address of 192.168.0.4, which is the next 
available address, which is just fine. but if i don't provide that 
address, i don't get the IP assignment at all.

now. i'm on a little home network that sits behind an internet 
appliance (a d-link thing), which claims to function as a dhcp 
server. i do not know how this figures into things, but i mention it 
because it might.

the goal is for my wife to be able to use the machine on the network 
here at home, also the network at her office, also through the 
dataport things in hotel rooms when we're on the road.

finally, am i right that dhcp effectively eliminates the ability to 
hotplug the pcmcia card and get instant network access, as with a 
fixed IP, and instead requires the card to be in place at boot?

as you have now seen demonstrated, what i know about networking could 
be put on a postcard, with room for a pretty big picture.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within the 
envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.