Strange routing table.

[Erik P. Olsen]

Scot L. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 01:49 +0100, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> 
>>My main box is an FC3 linux box wire coupled to a Linksys router WRT54G. 
>>I have two laptops wireless coupled to the router. One laptop runs 
>>Windows 2000 the other Windows XP. The laptops can ping all boxes but 
>>the linux box can't ping the laptops. All boxes access the internet 
>>through the router without any problem whatsoever. In addition I have 
>>two printers wire coupled to the router and all boxes can print on any 
>>printer.
>>
>>The routing table on the linux box is:
>>
>>Kernel IP routing table
>>Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use 
>>Iface
>>192.168.1.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
>>169.254.0.0     *               255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth0
>>default         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0
>>
>>It looks quite primitive to me compared to what I see on the windows 
>>boxes, so I assume something is wrong with - but what? How can I 
>>customise the routing table so that I can ping the laptops?
>>
>>Also it contains a destination address of 169.254.0.0 which I don't know 
>>and which I have not added to the table myself. What could it be and who 
>>has put it into my routing table?
> 
> 
> You can ignore the 169.254 address.  That is there due to the zeroconf
> being enabled by default.  You can disable this if you like.
> 
> You don't provide details on how you are trying to ping the other
> systems from the linux box.  Are you using their IP addresses or trying
> to use their host names?  You should be able to ping them using IP
> addresses.  Unless you are using DNS that contains all of your local
> machines host names or have put those names in your /etc/hosts file.
> Windows systems can utilize info collected using WINS and Netbios to
> determine hostnames.  
> 
I have been using both IP-addresses and host names and the host names are 
correctly substituted by the corresponding IP-addresses.

Since you believe I should be able to ping them I'll leave the routing table 
issue and look for inhibitors outside the linux box. Perhaps it's in the router? 
I'll concentrate on that.

-- 
Regards,
Erik P. Olsen