[Tfug] DSL Problem

[Jim Secan]

I'm having a hair-ripping-out problem interfacing with the Internet from my
home LAN.  I have DSL from QWest/TheRiver using an ActionTEC DSL modem that
provides DHCP and NAT for my LAN.  The modem links into a switch which has
two XP machines and an iMac OS X machine linked to it.  One of the XP
machines has FC3 on it in dual-boot configuration.  Both the XP machines
and the iMac have no problems with the internet connection.

However.

While I can ping and traceroute to anywhere I've tried from the FC3
machine, I have fits when I try to use http (via Firefox).  The system has
all the latest updates and is running the latest kernel.  If I try to visit
a URL, the browser just sits there and the "I'm busy" indicator just spins
it's little heart out but no pages are served.  If I traceroute to that
URL, then (about 90% of the time) I can get the browser to "see" that page.
 Doesn't always work (google and yahoo are two exceptions).

I've run some tests using ethereal, and it looks like it might be a DNS
problem.  The network settings on the FC3 box show the modem (at
192.168.0.1) as the primary DNS (which seems odd) and the ISP's secondary
DNS as secondary.  If I manually force the primary DNS to be the ISP's
primary, it helps for a bit but then reverts to the modem as primary.  When
I look at the ethereal output, I'm seeing the response to DNS queries being
IP addresses of 1.0.0.0.  This is when the browser goes into lala land.

So, is the problem FC3, the dhcp server, the ISP's setup, a combination of
two or three of these, or some other thing I haven't considered?  I also
have this problem with a laptop running FC3 that works fine on my office
network (which has a Linux DHCP server and uses Dakotacom as ISP) but has
the identical problem to the desktop system when on my home network.

Jim
*---------------------*-------------------------------*
| Jim Secan           | Northwest Research Assoc, Inc |
| (jim at nwra.com)      | 2455 E. Speedway, Suite 204   |
| (520) 319-7773      | Tucson, Arizona 85719         |
|    Space Weather Info: http://www.nwra-az.com/      |
*---------------------*-------------------------------*