Re: weirdest network problems of my ilfe [SOLVED]

[Cameron Matheson <cameron.matheson@fjcomm.com>]

Hey thanks for everyone's responses... i'm still not 100% sure what the 
problem ended up being, but this is what i did (this was thanks to some 
submissions on the list, #debian, and trial and error).  The lowering of 
the MTU explanation made the most sense to me, but it didn't actually do 
anything differently.  I messed around w/ many other settings and got 
ready to yell at my isp (but i really really hate talking to the 
customer support people).  Anyway, someone recommended releasing my DHCP 
information and then getting another address.  That didn't make a 
difference, but i figured since it was taking sooo long to tcptraceroute 
my way back to various places something had to be up w/ the DNS.  My 
/etc/resolv.conf had the 192.168.0.1 and xx.xx.3.65 (i can't remember 
the number exactly, just the last two octets).  I heard someone tell me 
some of  those routers are pretty screwy so i deleted the line w/ 
192.168.0.1 and tried tcptraceroute again... much faster  this time, and 
then everything else worked too.  Still not sure what exactly is up, 
because i had tried deleting that line before w/ no effect.  But maybe 
it really was necessary to release my dhcp lease also (i don't 
understand why that would make a difference... could someone explain 
why?  or am i just confused?).  Anyway, it's nice that everything's 
working again.

Cameron Matheson

P.S.  Yesterday i was trying to figure out why the windoze boxen would 
work when the linux boxen wouldn't (they also have 192.168.0.1 as one 
of  their dns servers).  The only thing i could think of is i thought at 
one  time i had heard that windows boxen alternate which dns server they 
use every time they send out a request, whereas Linux tries to always 
use the primary.  Is that plausible?


cameron.matheson@flyingjcomm.com wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Ok after installing the new router that came w/ my dsl i'm having the most
> mind-boggling internet problems of my life.  Here's some background on my
> network:
>
>
>                               +----Linux box
>                               |----Linux laptop (wireless)
> Wireless/Wired Router/Modem----+----Windows box #1
>                               |----Windows laptop
>                               +----Windows laptop (wireless)
>
> Ok, so first off... all of my family's windows boxes are working fine. 
> Everything is just normal.  The linux boxen however, have problems. 
> Internet generally works (although some sites (slashdot, gmail, etc) won't
> load in firefox (for some reason they will in links).  I can't connect to
> yahoo/jabber/msn/etc w/ gaim, but i can w/ centericq.  I've been trying to
> figure out all this for forever and so i tried to tcptraceroute my way to
> messenger.hotmail.com as an experiment (on port 1863 or whatever it was). 
> It took a while, but the route was traced.  The funny thing is that if i
> start tracing the route, and then start up gaim, i connect just fine. 
> same goes for the sites that didn't load up in my browser... I can't
> figure out why everything works on the windows, but not on my linux boxen.
> the network stuff is all assigned by the router (dhcp).  What should i
> do?
>
> Thanks,
> Cameron Matheson
>
>
>