DHCP on specific IP address range

I encountered a problem with the DHCP IP address assignment on my setup.

I have 3 pcs connect to a wireless router. Two of them running windows xp using wireless connection. The last one run the knoppix 4.0.2. One of the windows Xp machine is always on for either downloading or running some internal programs.

The problem I have is by the time I boot up the knoppix machine, it sometimes will use the same IP address as the windows xp machine and causing the abend of the programs in the windows machine.

My router has the DHCP server in there and suppose to assign unused IP address dynamically to any PC connect to it.

I just wonder if there is any method I can control on the knoppix box when it asks for an IP address from the DHCP server and limit the range of IP address the DHCP server can provide in order to avoid the conflict of the IP address assignment.

For example, can I ask the DHCP returns me an unused IP address starting from a specific IP address range?

Rgds,
Chip

Chip,

First of all, it sounds like your router may have a serious problem. It should not reassign the same IP address.

Second, are you absolutely sure that you are connecting to your router and not another router in the neighborhood? Yea, it seems like a stupid question, but it happens more often than you would expect. Much more often than a router reusing an IP address!

Third, what make and model of router is this? That will be a big factor in what settings you have to deal with this. For example I like Dlink because they let me lock a MAC address to an IP address and still give the IP addresses out by DHCP. So I can be sure that once I have the table set up a particular MAC will always get the same IP address. Handy for when you run servers that need ports forwarded to an IP address, and Dlink is the only brand that I have found that I can do this with and still use DHCP on the same computer (which, as a Knoppix user, I want to do).

Forth, in addition to the router make and model it might also help if you were very explicit about the addresses being handed out. As long as these are private addresses they are completely unreachable from the Internet, There is no security reason not to state the addresses explicitly, and since something is clearly going wrong here it might help us if we had all of the facts.

Chip, one additional thought.....

If none of the above shed light on this then I suspect that you may be the victim of ARP poisoning (look it up). I would reset the router and test everything again with wireless turned off. I would also change the security key, and if using WEP be sure to use the longer 128 bit version, manually change the key frequently (daily is not unreasonable), and keep the wireless feature enabled only when you actually use it.

It will likely help if you give us more information on what you see when this IP assignment problem happens, that is, how does your network react?

As a last ditch "fix", and one that I would hate to resort to, you could set static IP addresses in the windows boxes that were outside of the dynamic IP range. That is, tell the router to hand out addresses between 192.168.0.100 and 192,168.0.200 and then set static addresses like 192.168.0.50 and 192.168.0.51 in the windows boxes. But there should really be no need for this and I would try to resolve the router problem, oherwise it will likely come back and impact you some other way.

I've solved this issue on the router-side instead of client-side.
I've an 11pc LAN network with static addresses: 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.20.
I've setted my d-link dsl500 router to assign dhcp range ip between 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.9, so if some laptop come in my lan it doesn't conflict with statics_ip_desktops.

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Originally Posted by maxIT

I've solved this issue on the router-side instead of client-side.
I've an 11pc LAN network with static addresses: 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.20.
I've setted my d-link dsl500 router to assign dhcp range ip between 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.9, so if some laptop come in my lan it doesn't conflict with statics_ip_desktops.

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Yes, this should work and is in fact the "last ditch fix" that I listed above. But the problem is that Knoppix or other live CDs also get the DHCP address this way. I find it is better for me if I know what IP address Knoppix is assigned. That way if I boot it on my Desktop I know it will be 192.168.0.100, if I boot it on my notebook I know it will be 192.168.0.103 and so on. This is particularly handy as I move between systems trying to resolve some networking issues, accessing one system from another by FTP or some other technology and what to be able to plug in IP addresses that are just natural to me, without having to move back to the Live CD systems and look up what IP address they got after their last reboot. Chip should be able to at the very least determine why the router is handing out duplicate IP addresses (if it even is his own router), and depending on the router may be able to use some router features to hand out IP addresses in a less than random way.

The 'schema' I've followed was suggested to me from onlines tutorials. They always says: "limit the ip range assignment by the router". I've never heard about someting like 'avoid duplicate ip assignment', that would imply a previous scanning of existing acive ip on the network by the router. And assuming that this 'previous scanning' could exist, what about a static ip desktop turned on after dhcp assignment? It doesn't care if the same of his ip is already in use.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

...without having to move back to the Live CD systems and look up what IP...

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As concern this isssue you can use 'nmap' to scan the network ips.

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Originally Posted by maxIT

As concern this isssue you can use 'nmap' to scan the network ips.

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Oh sure, there are ways and nmap is a good one, but even then there would be times that you just have to go look (imagine for example that I had two copies of Knoppix booted on two systems and was trying to network between then, then moved to a third system somewhere and wanted to network to a specific one of the two. Overall I just find it better to always know what IP addresses my systems should be at, no matter what OS they booted. It also means that I don't have to change any port forwarding in my router; if I have the FTP port forwarded to my system that normally runs my Windows FTP server, for example, and I boot a Live CD and try to get an FTP server up on the same box, I know that I don't have to make any port forwarding changes.

This is certainly not a major issue, but as long as I have the ability to set up my router to make life easy I will use it. And I bought this brand of router even though I had a perfectly good other router just to get this feature. The more serious problem is Chip's router supposedly handing out duplicate IP addresses, which just isn't right. I hope we hear back from him in this thread on what he has learned about this problem.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

Oh sure, there are ways and nmap is a good one, but even then there would be times that you just have to go look (imagine for example that I had two copies of Knoppix booted on two systems and was trying to network between then, then moved to a third system somewhere and wanted to network to a specific one of the two.

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If you run 'nmap' as root you can even obtain the 'mac address' together with ip address, so you can exacltly know wich particular client it refer to.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

The more serious problem is Chip's router supposedly handing out duplicate IP addresses, which just isn't right.

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My router behave in the same Chip's way. You are talking as this kind of behavior would be somewhat 'pathologic', while ihmo is the default for average routers. But repeat...just IHMO :lol:

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Originally Posted by maxIT

If you run 'nmap' as root you can even obtain the 'mac address' together with ip address, so you can exacltly know wich particular client it refer to.

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That would seem to expect me to remember all of my MAC addresses. Botom line, that isn't likely to happen. I can remember my IP addresses because they are arranged in a logical order and sequential. I can't remember the rather random MAC addresses.

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Originally Posted by maxIT

My router behave in the same Chip's way.

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Your router is handing out the same IP address to multiple computers too? I find that hard to believe. Of course, if you just mean that it doesn'r have a feature to lock IP addresses to MAC addresses then I certainly believe that, I had to shop for features to get this capability.

This thread prompted me to go out and buy a d-link wireless router so i could implement mac-to-ip binding. This is what I ended up with - http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=474 and I will be trying to figure out how to do the dnsmasq-ish thing.

HK, if you get a chance could you look and see if this unit will do what your's do?

Thanks.

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Originally Posted by rusty

HK, if you get a chance could you look and see if this unit will do what your's do?

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I'll look when I get some time Rusty, the manual is downloading now. Of course, it might have been better to look before making a purchase, as routers from any company can vary from model to model. If the router (which looks physicaly different than any of the 3 Dlink routers that I have used that all do have this feature) has similar software, it will be accessed by the home tap on the top of the web setup and the DHCP button on the left side when home is selected. Near the bottom of that page on my system is the Static DHCP Client List on my router, where I set this up. MAC addresses in this list get a fixed IP address from the IP pool and those IP addresses are not handed out to other computers, even if the computer claiming that address is not on-line and has not beem for a long time.

Rusty,

I have read through the manual for the WBR-1310 and I'm sorry to say that it does not seem to have this capability. Three others D-link routers I have used all have it (including a DL-514 that I have that I'm not a hugh fan of for other reasons), but the setup menus in this router look very different from those in older Dlink routers and this seems to be missing.

I did see that UPnP seems to be on by default. If you decide to keep the router I would urge you to disable this feature.

Had it and I lost it.

I found the feature I was looking for and set it up. Good. Went to forward port 80 to 8080 on one server and 8080 to 8080 on another - it didn't like that.

Checked the d-link website and found a firmware upgrade, loaded it and the dhcp reservation feature is GONE. And the port forwarding is the same and nothing like the support tab suggests.

I guess I'll either get a different d-link product or go for a WRT54G and try OpenWrt

PS. Thanks for taking the time, Harry :)

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Originally Posted by rusty

I guess I'll either get a different d-link product or go for a WRT54G and try OpenWrt

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One major problem that you need to know about the Linksys router is that while the original 54 had the memory to support OpenWrt, it is my understanding that they made a change a few months ago and now the normal 54 has half as much memory and will not support third part software. They apparently still offer a version of the router with the original memory size, but sell it under a different model number, and I expect that that model is hard to find and much more expensive than the normal 54 (since the normal 54 often had sale prices and rebates associated with it but now this "fringe" product will not). I have no idea how to determine if a 54 you see in the box in the store is old production that might be suitable for OpenWrt or not. I would suggest that you do some research before buying something that you may be disapointed with, and if you learn any more about this than the modest bit I have said please pass it back to me.
See
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl.../11/11/0638221
and
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.../12/01/2326222

Here's a bit more on the wrt54, http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.p...rticle&sid=446

caveat emptor

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

First of all, it sounds like your router may have a serious problem. It should not reassign the same IP address.

Second, are you absolutely sure that you are connecting to your router and not another router in the neighborhood?

Third, what make and model of router is this?

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Sorry for the late reply. Got too much stuff to do at work.

1st Question: I absolutely with you Harry.
2nd Question: I pretty sure all the wireless pc is connected to my network as I can see it connects to the right SSID.
3rd Question: My router is a "Network Everywhere" model NWR04B. (I was told it is the same manufacture for the LinkSys products)

I did a detail reading on my router's manual and found that I can set the DHCP to return a range of IP address.

So here is what I did to avoid the problem:
1. Set the DHCP server to return the range of IP address starts from 192.168.1.100
2. Set both Windows XP pcs using static IP address: 192.168.1.90 and 91
3. The knoppix machine is using the DHCP dynamic IP addressing mode.

Now everything seems working OK. But I still do know what make the duplication of the DHCP IP address mode happens.

Also I encounter another problem too. I tried to make the knoppix machine to use static IP address and I did the following:

1. boot from the cd 4.0.2 with cheat code: knoppix nodhcp
2. from the console enter: sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.92
3. from the console enter: sudo route add -net default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev eth0

It all run successfully, I did a checking with the ifconfig and route command and find that it seems the setting is ok. The knoppix machine is identified locally and working OK. (i.e. can connect from the Windows XP machine via Putty and ftp)

But when I try to access any web page, (i.e. www.yahoo.com, www.hotmail.com) I got an error saying "Host not found".

I think I must be missing something on my setup steps. Anyone can help?

Rgds,
Chip

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

But when I try to access any web page, (i.e. www.yahoo.com, www.hotmail.com) I got an error saying "Host not found".

I think I must be missing something on my setup steps. Anyone can help?

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Just have the problem solved. Forgot to define the DNS server name. I add the following line in the /etc/resolv.conf file
nameserver 192.168.1.1

Now the internet connection is working.

Rgds,
Chip

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

2nd Question: I pretty sure all the wireless pc is connected to my network as I can see it connects to the right SSID.

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Yes, confirming the SSID is important here. So is using wpa or at lease a wep key which should assure you that you are not getting connected to something else and bouncing back and forth. I have caught one friend who didn't listen to my advice to set up an encryption key but then finally asked me to look at their network to figure out why they couldn't network between the notebook and the desktop systems; sure enough the notebook was managing to connect through a neighbor's router. But this would have actually been a better thing to fix in your case, the router duplicating IP addresses really scares me.

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

1st Question: I absolutely with you Harry.
3rd Question: My router is a "Network Everywhere" model NWR04B. (I was told it is the same manufacture for the LinkSys products)

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I don't know what to make of the "Network Everywhere" / Linksys claim. I am looking into it; and getting some very strange results back. I'll post what I find there as soon as I have details that I can share. But it really doesn't matter, that's what you have and it should not be doing what it is doing.

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

I did a detail reading on my router's manual and found that I can set the DHCP to return a range of IP address.

So here is what I did to avoid the problem:
1. Set the DHCP server to return the range of IP address starts from 192.168.1.100
2. Set both Windows XP pcs using static IP address: 192.168.1.90 and 91
3. The knoppix machine is using the DHCP dynamic IP addressing mode.

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Yea, this is the less than perfect alternative I offered above. But you want DHCP to be a real working tool if you need it, for example if a few friend come over with laptops, you would not want to have to make people do manual configurations just to avoid the router handing out the same IP address. I would still suggest resetting the router and see if the problem persists. If so I would try to determine if there is a firmware update available.

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

Also I encounter another problem too. I tried to make the knoppix machine to use static IP address and I did the following:

1. boot from the cd 4.0.2 with cheat code: knoppix nodhcp
2. from the console enter: sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.92
3. from the console enter: sudo route add -net default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev eth0

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One problem that I see right away here is that the netmask should not be 0.0.0.0.
I don't know about the route command, I generally just use netcardconfig and then anser the dhcp question "no". but try a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and see if that helps, otherwise try netcardconfig.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

One problem that I see right away here is that the netmask should not be 0.0.0.0.
I don't know about the route command, I generally just use netcardconfig and then anser the dhcp question "no". but try a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and see if that helps, otherwise try netcardconfig.

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The values I'm using are based on the working value when I'm using HDCP. I boot up the knoppix cd with HDCP, and then I type route, it gives me the netmask value of 0.0.0.0.

That's why I'm using it. Let me try to use 255.255.255.0 and see what the difference is.

Rgds,
Chip

Chip, I know nothing about the route command, but 0.0.0.0 is never a valid netmask. Do a little reading about netmask on Google for details.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

One problem that I see right away here is that the netmask should not be 0.0.0.0.
I don't know about the route command, I generally just use netcardconfig and then anser the dhcp question "no". but try a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and see if that helps, otherwise try netcardconfig.

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Harry, no netmask 255.255.255.0 is not working. It has to be 0.0.0.0 in order to make it work. I post my whole test steps below.

1. Boot knoppix 4.0.2 cd with cheat code: knoppix nodhcp
2. Open a console session
3. $sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.90
4. $sudo route add -net gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth0
5. $sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf
(add the line: nameserver 192.168.1.1 and then save the file)
6. Try to go to www.yahoo.com (fails)
7. $sudo route add -net gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev eth0
8. $sudo route del -net gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth0
9. Now use the browser to go to www.yahoo.com (success)

Rgds,
Chip

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

Harry, no netmask 255.255.255.0 is not working. It has to be 0.0.0.0 in order to make it work.....

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Chip, something very very strange is going on here. I urge you to look up what netmask does. 0.0.0.0. is never a valid netmask, but if it was it would tell the router to never send traffic off the local lan. If you have any Windows systems on that network I suggest that you check their netmasks with ipconfig (open a DOS shell). Of course, we know that your router is already doing something strange, but this mask should break many things.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

Chip, something very very strange is going on here. I urge you to look up what netmask does. 0.0.0.0. is never a valid netmask, but if it was it would tell the router to never send traffic off the local lan. If you have any Windows systems on that network I suggest that you check their netmasks with ipconfig (open a DOS shell). Of course, we know that your router is already doing something strange, but this mask should break many things.

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Harry,

I think the netmask value here is for the gateway you try to reach to the outside world and if you set the value to 255.255.255.0, it will limit your address to your local network only. In my case, I want my machine being able to access all possible address on the internet so 0.0.0.0 make sense to me.

Please do a testing on your end by boot up a knoppix cd with DHCP mode on and after it boots up. Type the route command on the console and see if your result is same as mine.

Rgds,
Chip

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

I think the netmask value here is for the gateway you try to reach to the outside world and if you set the value to 255.255.255.0, it will limit your address to your local network only. In my case, I want my machine being able to access all possible address on the internet so 0.0.0.0 make sense to me.

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As I said, I don't use the route command, so I'll want to do some reading and testing with it when I next get a chance. But all of my experience is that 0.0.0.0 is always a bad netmask. As to reaching the outside world, you local system should use the IP address that you are trying to reach and the netmask to determine if the gateway should be used or not. A netmask of 0.0.0.0 indicates that the address is always on the local LAN and so a gateway would never be used. I'm guessing that your somewhat unusual router is likely seeing the IP address as it comes into the switch and knows that it needs to be routed to the WAN port anyway, but things might break for you if your network grows to include additional switches unless this netmask issue is resolved. You may also have some problems the broadcast address and with Address Resolution Protocol with that netmask. And, in fact, this very well could give a clue as to why the same IP address is being handed out more than once! If ARP is broken due to a bad netmask then the routers tables may never be updated to reflect that the IP address is in use and not available for further use (although that still leaves a lot to be explained, like how it manages to route your traffic back to you).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

Please do a testing on your end by boot up a knoppix cd with DHCP mode on and after it boots up. Type the route command on the console and see if your result is same as mine.

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I will look at both the route command and it's man page when I have time, although to be honest I haven't even booted Knoppix lately. Again I would ask that you also take a little time and look up netmask on Google and see if you can find me any references that explain validly using 0.0.0.0 as a netmask.

You might also want to use ethereal to sniff the network connection and see the ARP traffic that goes on every couple of minutes to see if your system is actually receiving and responding properly to ARP packets. I don't see how it could be with that netmask, since it would not recognize a broadcast as a broadcast, but would think it was a packet intended for someone else.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

As I said, I don't use the route command, so I'll want to do some reading and testing with it when I next get a chance.

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Neither do I. I just do a wild guess.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

I will look at both the route command and it's man page when I have time, although to be honest I haven't even booted Knoppix lately.

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I think if you already have a knoppix machine up and running, you don't really need to do a reboot. Just open a console and type "route", it will show what your gateway netmask value.

Rgds,
Chip

Chip, I'm posting this from Debian so that I can cut and paste some info. I'm not using Knoppix, as I said I have not run Knoppix recently, but I believe that Knoppix and Debian will have the same results here. I am connecting by DHCP to a Dlink router.

I have never had any occasion to use route and am not clear why you are using it either. When I get my DHCP setup I get a netmask and other settings from the router. That info can be seen by looking at the output of ifconfig (only the portion that deals with eth0 is shown here):

Code:

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k6:/home/harry# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:A0:CC:E8:48:D3
          inet addr:192.168.0.103  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::2a0:ccff:fee8:48d3/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:6525 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2751 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:2
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:7402966 (7.0 MiB)  TX bytes:191431 (186.9 KiB)
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xe800

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Note that the netmask is what it should be for a normal private network using a 192.168 address and having at most 254 users (253 and the router).

Note also that my router is handing out addresses in the 192.168.0.x range while yours is handing out addresses in the 192.168.1.x range. This is normal and I have even seen some routers that default to the 192.168.2.x range and you likely can set this to any third number that you want in your router setup. It is not a problem that we have different numbers here.

I read through the man documentation for route. I see there plenty of example with a netmask, but none that use a netmask of 0.0.0.0.

I couldn't see anything in the man pages to just get route to show me information, so I just tried the command route with no other input. It outputted this:

Code:

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k6:/home/harry# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination    Gateway        Genmask        Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0    *              255.255.255.0  U    0      0        0 eth0
default        192.168.0.1    0.0.0.0        UG    0      0        0 eth0

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Note that there indeed is a 0.0.0.0 in this output, but it is called a genmask, not a netmask. If you Google the term genmask you will quickly find that the routing tables is using this as a mask differently than a normal netmask and that 0.0.0.0 is simply the general case default that the routing table uses if nothing more specific matches. So I guess this is why it is working for you, but I have no idea why you need to use the route command at all. I and most other people here using routers do not need to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

I have never had any occasion to use route and am not clear why you are using it either. When I get my DHCP setup I get a netmask and other settings from the router.

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I try to use static IP address for my Knoppix server instead of DHCP assign IP address to it. So I boot the knoppix with the cheat code: knoppix nodhcp

After the boot up, only the "lo" is set up with a value. The eth0 is not defined. No gateway defined.

I need to use the "ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.90" to set up the static IP address.

Then use the "route add -net default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev eth0" to set up the default gateway to 192.168.1.1 and Genmask to 0.0.0.0 for device eth0.

The last step is to add an entry "nameserver 192.168.1.1" to the /etc/resolv.conf file, it is to define the DNS service.

Basically, it is a step by step setup the knoppix server address manually.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

Code:

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k6:/home/harry# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination    Gateway        Genmask        Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0    *              255.255.255.0  U    0      0        0 eth0
default        192.168.0.1    0.0.0.0        UG    0      0        0 eth0

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Note that there indeed is a 0.0.0.0 in this output, but it is called a genmask, not a netmask. If you Google the term genmask you will quickly find that the routing tables is using this as a mask differently than a normal netmask and that 0.0.0.0 is simply the general case default that the routing table uses if nothing more specific matches. So I guess this is why it is working for you, but I have no idea why you need to use the route command at all. I and most other people here using routers do not need to.

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Yes, you are right. I double check on my "route" output. It is identical to yours. It shows Genmask instead of netmask.

But I think the confusion here is the "route" command itself, "netmask 0.0.0.0" in fact setup the genmask value and is not really a netmask setup.

Rgds,
Chip

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chip.ling

I try to use static IP address for my Knoppix server instead of DHCP assign IP address to it. So I boot the knoppix with the cheat code: knoppix nodhcp

After the boot up, only the "lo" is set up with a value. The eth0 is not defined. No gateway defined.

I need to use the "ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.90" to set up the static IP address.

Then use the "route add ...

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Actually, I had thought that by doing static IP addresses on the other systems you were now able to use DHCP with Knoppix. But OK, lets assume that you want to boot with knoppix nodhcp for any reason.... After booting try this: run netcardconfig, either from the menu or from a shell. Say no to the first DHCP question (assuming that you still don't want to do a dhcp setup). Then answer the remaining questions, using 255.255.255.0 when asked for a netmask.

After doing the above your ethernet connection should work, and it should be cleaner than using ifconfig and then route. No need for multiple commands (although you can use ifconfig after that if you just want to see the setings, but it is not needed).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

Actually, I had thought that by doing static IP addresses on the other systems you were now able to use DHCP with Knoppix.

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I think I might run the Linux box as a server in the future that's why I try to use static addressing.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

But OK, lets assume that you want to boot with knoppix nodhcp for any reason.... After booting try this: run netcardconfig, either from the menu or from a shell. Say no to the first DHCP question (assuming that you still don't want to do a dhcp setup). Then answer the remaining questions, using 255.255.255.0 when asked for a netmask.

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Yes, netcardconfig should work fine. But I try to avoid using the interactive command if possible. I think I might put all the setup commands in a script in the future to automate the process. I don't know much about the syntax of netcardconfig command, can I input all the parameters on the command line instead of the interactive mode?

I think one of the confusion here is that I don't use the full syntax of the ifconfig command in my case, I just go for the short cut and let the ifconfig command picks the default value of netmask, which is 255.255.255.0. But I can always use the full syntax of it like:
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.90 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

After doing the above your ethernet connection should work, and it should be cleaner than using ifconfig and then route. No need for multiple commands (although you can use ifconfig after that if you just want to see the setings, but it is not needed).

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Well, I agree on your point that it is easier to use the netcardconfig. But I think the multiple steps I'm using help me to know more about what the what actually happening under the hood.

Rgds,
Chip

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

I don't know what to make of the "Networks Everywhere" / Linksys claim. I am looking into it;

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I now have confirmation that Networks Everywhere is a part of Linksys that sell what they call their "value line". But apparently these are very different routers and related equipment than the main line. Someone who looked into this for me idicated that he was finding a lot of complaints on the Internet about the "Networks Everywhere" products.