> All I can tell you is that no matter what default gateway ip address
> i enter, it wont get past linux. linux is makeing the connection to the
> isp and is acting like a gateway on the local network. linux can ping
> the win95 box, win95 can ping linux, but nothing is getting past linux
> out to the internet. sigh....
>
Well, you must have a problem somewhere in your setup. There doesn't seem
to be any Linux problems (at least I used 1.2.13, 1.3.38 and 2.0.27
kernels for our Linux gateway without any problems). I have also used
Win95, Win3.11 and Linux behind our gateway and getting out to the
Internet has worked fine.
At our site we have a 100Mbps and 10Mbps network connected to the Internet
via a Linux gateway machine (using a 28.8 modem - mostly e-mail and light
web surfing). We of course have to pay more money to our ISP for a
dedicated PPP account (with a static IP address and our class C network
routed to it). If you have a generic $20 a month ISP account then you
will only be able to have one official IP address (even if you have an
"official" registered IP address on your internal network none of the
routers on the Internet will know that they must route packets to the ISP
IP address unless the ISP configures it such - which usually means $$$).
If you are using a single IP account without routing or a dynamic IP
account (like most standard ISP accounts) you should look into IP
masquerading (which works quite well in many situations if your Win95
users only initiate connections to the outside worls [i.e., don't run
servers]).
Some things you should check (other people have already mentioned some):
* Is your local network registered with InterNIC? (e.g., if your local IP
addresses are 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x your aren't using registered IP
addresses)
* Does your ISP know about your local network and are they routing packets
addressed to it through your gateway acccount?
[If you have an external modem you can easily check for the above two
items by pinging an Internet host from a Win95 box and watching the Linux
gateways modem lights for outgoing packets and the incoming echo packets.
If you only see outgoing packets then one of the above items is probably
your problem. If you don't even see outgoing packets then the Linux
machine is not forwarding (or other problem) or your Win95 machine can't
talk to Linux machine at all (perhaps an ethernet problem).]
* Is your Linux kernel set up for IP forwarding? If it is a newer 2.1.x
kernel you may need to "echo 2 > /proc/net/<somewhere>" to enable this
feature.
* Are the Win95 boxes set to have the Linux boxes _local_ IP address as
the default route (e.g., the address of the Linux ethernet card not the
PPP IP address)?
* Is the default route on the Linux box set to remote PPP IP address
(should be if the Linux box can get to the 'Net)?
* Netmasks and IP addresses set properly?
* Hardware problems (cabling etc.)?
Take it easy,
Ken Jordan