Hi Jeff,
You should definitely use static IP addresses, and avoid 169.x.x.x addresses (these are automatically assigned by your computer and tend to change).
Please do the following:
Manually assign one of these IP addresses to the computers and ethernet ports in your setup: 192.168.0.x or 10.0.0.x, and assign a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, then it should work.
Best,
Paul
Paul Kopf Product Manager VSL