no Internet conexion with ADSL & router

[Harry Kuhman]

Thanks for trying, but I cannot ping anywhere beyond the router. Not numeric IP nor symbolic. It's a Zyxel Prestige 650HW, if that helps.

It is always best to give that information, on the chance that the people who are trying to help you do know the router. In this case I have no experience with Zyxel though and I'll assume that you can read the manual at least as good as I could. OK, we now think that it is not a DNS issue....

I'm not using DHCP cos I prefer to use a static local IP for NAT through the router.

Actually, you should still be able to have DHCP enabled in the router and assign static IP addresses to the Windows boxes if you wish. Almost all routers let you control the range of IP addresses that DHCP hands out. I typically let it hand out addresses in the range 192.168.x.100 to 192.168.x.200, for example, but use lower or higher addresses if I want to assign static addresses. And most (but not all) routers simply hand out their DHCP IP addresses in order, so if you just assign static addresses at the high end of the range you should be OK if your router lacks the ability to restrict the DHCP IP range. I would suggest trying a boot with DHCP and see if that does not help (but read the rest of this response first). Yes, you should be able to configure without DHCP (although DHCP makes working with a Live CD much simpler), but since you are having problems this would be a step worth taking.

I have the proper ports open in the router config (same conf as winXP, that works pretty good).

OK, this is extremely confusing. What do you mean you have the proper ports open? While most routers have the ability to block ports (to keep the kids off IRQ for example), you should not have to "open" any ports with normal router usage. And if you are forwarding ports for some reason then you can't forward the same ports to another computer also. So just what are you doing here?

Do I really not need to run PPPoE assistant?? If not, how do I pass to the system the connection parameters of my ISP?? (ADSL user login and password?)

In your router setup there should be configuration information where you tell it if you are using cable, DSL or some other type of system. If you select DSL you should have told the router what your username and password are. The router then logs into the ISP using the user name and password (or as you say, connection parameters), which takes care of the DSL login. It then assigns local private IP addresses to all of your computers (192.168.1.xxx addesses in this case). This is refered to as NAT. So the router logs in once for all of the network. If this is not what is happening for you then this is the most likely source of your problems. Once the router logs in the other systems don't need or want to run PPPoE software, life will be much better without it.


I saw nothing wrong in the ifconfig. The MTU might be a bit high for DSL, but this is not the source of the current problem and things should still work. I don't ever use the route command, so I'm less sure of what I'm seeing there. I don't like the 0.0.0.0 value for Gateway, but I can't say if it's a real problem of not. My suggestions are:

• 1. Resolve the issue of the router knowing your user/password and logging into the ISP for you
  
  2. Remove all PPPoE software from Windows and don't use the PPPoE software in Knoppix.
  
  3. Try booting with DHCP and see if that helps, and note the route table at that time.