The Broadcast
address would be the highest non-assignable address for your subnet. It determines the end point of your network, where the network
is the start point.
For example, with the following set up:
IP Address: 192.168.0.2
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Network : 192.168.0.0
We have the We are using a network of 192.168.0.0 (Which is unassignable to one specific client) with the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 (allowing addresses from 192.168.0.1 up to 192.168.0.254). This means our broadcast address will be
192.168.0.255
As this is one address higher than the highest assignable within the range.
Please note as well that your definitions aren't correct with this statement:
I know that the address is the IP I want to hardcode, gateway is my router IP, netmask is my DNS, network is my router IP
The address is indeed the manually configured IP address for the client and the gateway, in most cases, would be your routers IP address. However, the netmask is not related to DNS in any way, but defines the range of IP addresses available within your subnet. You can read more about this here. Also note that the network
address is defining the start point of the network, not your routers IP address. This should be the opposite of the broadcast address, the IP address before the first assignable address.
In all honesty, I don't think it would harm to leave these unset (although I haven't tested this as I don't have a UNIX system to test with). They're usually just for reference and can be automatically worked out from the host IP address and subnet mask.