Quote 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.
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