I have a Linksys BEFSR41 v3 router, Red Hat(Fedora3,desktop), Windows Xp(Laptop) network. Windows firewall is on, i havn't learned enough about linux to know if its firewall is on or not, if it is installed by default then i assume it is on.

I still have no clue why the connection stops. i've even tried diffrent settings under the eth0 network device control, like......checking the box for IPv6 config under Genrel tab.
Under Hardware devices I've tried unchecking Bind to Mac address(I don't know what this is even for or means)

The help file for the Network Device Controler doesn't have a troubleshooting part.

So basically after i lose connection about 30minutes to an hour into my connection. i have to de-activate the device(eth0), Before I re-activate the device, I unplug my router and cable modem. i then plug them back up, router first then i active the eth0 device and everything works fine. i don't have to do anything to the windows xp(laptop).

in the device(eth0) it is set to Auto set Ip setting using dhcp and auto optain DNS info, also have allow other users to activate and deactivate this device.

In Ethereal the last connection showing is the Linux box asking the router for Address Resolution Protocol(request).
In Ethereal info it displays: Who has x.x.x.x(router ip)? Tell x.x.x.x(linux ip)
then the Reply displays: x.x.x.x(router ip) is at xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx(router mac address)
the x's for where the ip numbers would be, are correct.
*The only thing that is diffrent is when i acces the router through my web browser, under status it shows the last 2 numbers in the MAC address as being 79 and in Ethereal it is recorded as 78 !?!

*update* I just noticed in Ethereal, when my connection stoped a few minutes ago, my windows xp asking the same thing info was: Who has x.x.x.x(router ip)? Tell x.x.x.x(windows ip) the src: is my windows mac address, but the dst: is showing ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
There was no reply

Do i need to apply the router IP address and hostname to my host.allow file?
The only reason i havn't added it, is because i don't know the routers hostname, there is no where even on status page in the router options that displays a hostname.


What's the Bind to Mac address thing for?
Does anyone know of any possible solutions to fix this?


thanks for any help

When you say the Internet connection stops, is it stopping for both the Linux and Windows machine or is it just the Linux machine that looses the Internet connection?

Both lose connection.

Still have no clue into why. The next time i lose connection i'm going to turn the firewall off and see if it loses connection then.

If both machines loose connection then the problem should not be an IP configuration problem on either machine.

You said that when you look at an ARP response packet from the Linksys router using Ethereal, you see that the MAC address of the router is different than what the status page of the router shows. If you capture some Internet traffic using Ethereal, what is the MAC address of the Linksys router then? Any traffic going to the Internet will have a destination IP address of some host on the Internet but the destination MAC address will be that of the Linksys router.

It would be interesting to see if for some reason ARP started to malfunction on the Linksys router.

Have you checked Linksys's web site? I know there is some updated code available for some versions of the BEFSR41.