Can't connect to internet through router

[archimedes1981]

SO, i had given up trying to use linux because i couldn't get connected through pppoe. Now I had the need of installing a router and since with this there should be no pppoe configurations through Knoppix and only through the router I am trying again. I setup the router myself and although it works perfectly on Win XP i might have done something wrong. What I did and supposedly works as i want it is this, I connected my PC using ethernet to the router while another PC is connected through wireless. The PC directly connected to the router works fine on XP (internet). The router should be set up using static IP to the PCs and DHCP to ISP. One question I have is this:
If the Inet is the IP address from eth0 to router and the gateway and mask are the same as on XP, what exactly is the Bcast IP??
I set it as blank in netcardconfig and it showed up 192.168.2.255. With this configuration i could browse the router GUI but unless there is something else to setup on KNOPPIX the internet connection is not working(on the PC connected with ethernet card). Also question 2 is this:
what is 'lo'? is it the LAN in winXP?
Do i have to set it up in some way? And also:
If i can browse the router , what is wrong with the internet connection? It shows up on the router! So i presume that it is eth0 that in fact i should have set up(and i did).
Thanks and regards.

[hedgehog]

Hi, I don't know much other than what I've found out going through the same process as you, but I can tell you that the broadcast address is (according to Wikipedia) an IP address that can transmit information to all machines on a subnet. I asked about it on another forum and was told that it is worked out from the first three number blocks of the IP address and the first of the subnet (eg if the IP address is 192.168.1.1 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0 the broadcast address is 192.168.1.255).
"lo" is the loopback - 127.0.0.1 is your own computer.
I've had no trouble accessing the internet through my router with the eth0 IP address, subnet and gateway all exactly the same as in XP and I did nothing to the "lo" connection information. Not sure if that is helpful, but good luck with it.

[kirol]

192.168.2.x looks good for a private IP range, and the fact that you can connect to your router seems to indicate that your address is OK. You haven't mentioned if you had configured DNS. Without it, you won't be able to do much. I suggest you try DHCP first, which should take care of providing your linux client with all the necessary parameters (IP, netmask, DNS servers...). Once that works and if you really need a static IP, make sure you provide all the parameters when asked by the knoppix "netcardconfig" script. If you've installed to HD, look into /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf

BTW PPPoE is perfectly supported on linux, by the "roaring penguin" SW, included with knoppix. Connecting through USB can be problematic, though, and purchasing a router is a smart move.

[Harry Kuhman]

Knoppix generally gets the setup by dhcp from the router and works fine. It might be helpful if you define what isn't working; as we have seen some reports of DNS server problems with firefoxc/iceweasel when the ISP is trying to support IPv6 (disabling IPv6 in the browser usually resolves this). There have also been reports of IPv4/IPv6 issues when the ISP assigned DNS servers are improperly configured (in this case you can ping an Internet address by IP address but not by URL).

Giving the output of ifconfig may help. In general the broadcast address will be 192.168.x.255, but this really is interdependent on the net mask (and, of course, the assigned local IP address).

And I'm assuming you are trying to get a wired connection working, not wireless, although I found that part of your post somewhat confusing.

[archimedes1981]

I finally managed to fix it...by mistake!
All my IPs start with 192.168.2.xxx
I set my Bcast address to 192.168.0.255 and it worked !
I'm happy with this but for future problems if anyone can give me an answer on why this happened it would be very helpful. Probably when I used to try without the router and using roaringpenguin that was the same problem i had!
Thanks to all , regards and best wishes.

[Harry Kuhman]

...All my IPs start with 192.168.2.xxx
I set my Bcast address to 192.168.0.255 and it worked !....

There is something very wrong here. While you may perceive this as working now, network activities that depend on broadcasts will fail under this condition. I suggest that you dig deeper into what is going wrong and correct it. It would be best to determine not only why this apparently out-of-range broadcast address seems to work, but also why you need to do any manual configuration at all rather than just letting DHCP configure the network for you.

I would be interested in seeing ifconfig output, both before and after you set the broadcast address to 192.168.0.255. Also, why this particular address? Is there something on your system that makes this address seem special, or is it just that you bypassed the normal (for your system) 192.168.2.255 broadcast address? I suggest an experiment where you try 192.168.50.255 and see what happens (or pretty much any address outside the 102.168.2.xxx and 192.168.0.xxx ranges). My guess is that your new broadcast address isn't really working, but it's preventing you from getting some information from the normal broadcast address that was leading to the problem.

If you choose to not track this down now, at the very least remember that you have done this and make it clear again that your broadcast address is not right when you come back later and make your next post about a networking problem that you are having. Because with addresses like this you will have future problems.

[archimedes1981]

So I reconfigured the (this is the first time i'm using knoppix to write on this site, i don't know why some words are being written in red ! anyway....) eth0 broadcast to 192.168.2.255 and it works too . I also think that this is better because although i had internet with the last IP (192.168.0.255) Knoppix always ended up in hanging while browsing but i'm not sure if it had anything to do with this. Also I forgot that as nameserver i used the Gateway IP and it must have been that which maked everything work and not the old broadcast).
I also did SWAP file configuration, which if i understood correctly seems to be something like the microsoft "virtual memory" , so it should run better like this too i think.
I will try browsing some heavier sites to check if it hangs again later.
(now all the words in this post turned back to black....I'm quite confused ! anyway...)
This is my ifconfig:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A1:F7:30
inet addr:192.168.2.101 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20b:6aff:fed1:f730/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:996 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:997 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:599725 (585.6 KiB) TX bytes:169568 (165.5 KiB)
Interrupt:21 Base address:0xd800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1100 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:1100 (1.0 KiB)

1) I don't need IPv6. How do I get rid of it?
2) Could it be the IPv6 or the bad broadcast that made knoppix hang ?
3) Does the "SWAP file configuration" help running?
4) When I "Save KNOPPIX configuration"and choose all the fields in it, do they include the SWAP file and any programs i 'install'?
5) Since this is a live cd, can I install anything which will come up again after i restart? I was going to look for an anti-virus and spam/adware protection....will these remain available after restart? Also some Divx drivers and flash players etc.
Thanks a lot for your precious help,

[archimedes1981]

Btw sorry forgot about the IP before configuring i will try restarting and post them. I am using this IP because I am on a wireless router(although this particular PC is hardwired) and I wish to setup every machine with static IP and MAC address so that no one steals broadband from me.

[Harry Kuhman]

...... and I wish to setup every machine with static IP and MAC address so that no one steals broadband from me.

I'm not quite sure the reason fpr the static IP addresses here, although different routers deal with this in different ways. You might want to spell out your understanding of what your router does in this area. As for MAC addresses, this will stop accidental access but will not even slow down a hard core hacker. The MAC can be spoofed, and if you are depending on it for security you may suffer the loss of a lot more than a little bandwidth. The proper approach for wireless security is to use WPA encryption (and absolutely not use WEP) with a long non-guessable, safe from dictionary attack key. If you do this you are secure, if you don't you are not. And even without using MAC spoofing a hacker may find it more useful to just passively monitor your wireless traffic and steal things like e-mail addresses and passwords (which often lead to other saved accounts and passwords, as well as bank accounts and more) than bothering to steal bandwidth. If you feel better about using a MAC table after setting up WPA, that's fine although it really isn't needed. But depending on a MAC table for any form of security is idiotic.

[archimedes1981]

well i didn't know that, i'll try to set everything to WPA. And as long as i'm asking for assistance and willing to learn i guess i'm not entitled to be called an idiot.
however can you answer any of my questions please?
I couldn't send you the ifconfig because i couldn't paste it on the web browser like i did before since i had no connection.
the idea was to save it on a txt file but knoppix does not always recognise my harddisks and sometimes it also shows icons of hardware which doesn't exist.
Then after trying a couple of things it always hangs.
I don't even know where to find any error logs if they exist.