Network problems

I'm a linux newbie, so please don't laugh at me too much. With that said, here's the issue. I installed Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC2 on a new machine I just built. I can't seem to get the machine onto the home network at all. I can't get the machine to access the internet or the Windows workgroup through Samba. I have DSL with a Westell Wirespeed modem/router. I have a Linksys hub hooked to the router to give me more ports so I can hook the rest of my computers into the network and provide them all internet access. Everything works fine between both of my Windows boxes, but the linux box is a whole different story. I have configured my network settings with the same info as I used for my Windows machines... the default gateway, static IP, DNS servers, subnet mask, etc. I configured the internet connection as LAN. The linux box is communicating with the hub because the activity LED on the hub for that machine blinks every so often. However, DrakConnect still says that my internet is not connected even though the network connection is up. Also, even though the network connection appears to be up, I am unable to see the Windows machines on the Samba network, and I'm unable to see the linux machine from the Windows machines. I've set everything up in the smb.conf file so that it matches my Windows network settings. Is there something else I need to do to get Samba working? One thing about the internet issue is I'm not sure if I put the correct thing for the host name. I put localhost for the host name and linuxserver as the zeroconf host name. Should those be something different? I'm probably not doing something really simple that's causing me all these problems, I just can't seem to figure out what's wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated.