routerless network problem

[cadvice]

Hi thanks for any help in advance

So I'm setting  up my first ethernet network I currently have 1 windows PC and 17 linux machines all connected through  a unmanaged network switch.

Now all the machines need static IP addresses which ive already setup in the range of 192.168.1.99-117 and I've set the subnetmask 255.255.255.0

Now before I had a router connected when I was installing updates etc so I had the gateway set at 192.168.1.1 and everything worked fine but now everything's setup I need to remove the router for security reasons so I removed  the gateway address and the router.

Now I can longer use vnc on my windows PC to control the linux machines I checked a linux machine and it will no longer allow me to set screen  share for my network. 

out of frustration I tried entering my workstation PC IP address in the gateway box on a linux machine and hey presto it allows me to take control of the machine through vnc from my workstation.

Now I don't think I've set this up right or I'm missing something as all the walk throughs I've looked at say I shouldn't need a gateway?

Thanks Ian.

[mynameisjuan]

You only need a gateway to leave a network. However, OSes don't like to work without a gateway whether it exist or not. Just enter an IP not in use.

 

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

You only need a gateway to leave a network. However, OSes don't like to work without a gateway whether it exist or not. Just enter an IP not in use.

 

Either do this or install DNSMasq on one of the Linux machines, configure it as a DHCP server and use that as a gateway. It would require you keep that machine on permanently though.

 

Care to explain why the need to remove the router?

[cadvice]

I've just set the gateways back to the router IP address and it's working fine thanks.

 

The reason for taking the router out is there's no need for internet access on any of the machines except my windows PC which is done through shared wifi.

There will come a point of updating but if I set my gateway to 192.168.1.1 then I can just connect to the router when needed.

Oh the linux machines are all server blades so there's never any reason for them to be online and seen as I've disabled the security features they're not exactly secure.

Thanks for your help