SORTED .........

My brother took pity and bought me an ADSL router .......
plugged it into the hub, pinged it from the server, set all boxes to get IP setting automatically, and BINGO ........ I got internet from every box online

Now to break it and fix it then break it again

Thanks again for the help, did plenty of reading up, and am now acutely aware of just how much knowledge I'm lacking ..........