I've only seen this issue with Debian, and it's really got me both baffled and annoyed.

I really want to continue to use Debian as my Gateway's distro, as it definetly does the job best - other than this particular issue.

What happens is that the gateway Intermittantly stops being able to send data to local machines (the ones its sharing Internet to).

Basically the client machines can ping the server fine, but if they try to ping anything OUTSIDE the network (on the Internet) they get:

Also during this time if I try to ping FROM the server to the clients it just gets no response.

I've tried now with three different LAN cards (Different brands and chipsets) and it happens with all of them. The problem happens every couple of hours and isnt affecting the connection to the Internet (the server can ping stuff on the Internet via its PPPoE connection with no problems whatsoever).

I'll try to provide ANY other info possible if more is needed.

I really hope I can get this issue sorted soon

Thanks,

Burn.

Are you using static or dynamic ips? I use debian for my gateway (I don't use pppoe, though) and using DHCP everything works fine.

It ended up that the ADSL Modem itself had a web interface on 192.168.1.1 which I'd never known about (In the two years I've used it...heh). I changed my network to the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet instead and its all good now