Hm interesting. Basically my server is a windows computer (ya windows is not a good server OS I know, was lazy and experimenting) and in the windows network settings I assigned it a static IP that was within my DHCP range.

I wasn’t aware you could set it outside the range but this makes sense that it should be outside of the range so that my router doesn’t give my servers IP address to something else.

As you can tell I’m not super knowledgeable about networking but your help is making things make more sense. I appreciate it!