This is probably pretty dumb but how about changing out NICs? How about a traceroute to your gateway? Try posting your traceroute data.

Well, if you reinstalled and now you can ping internally and gateway but not outside of gateway, now check to see if your /etc/resolv.conf file has the correct DNS entries.

What do you get for ifconfig and route commands ? And what does your resolv.conf file have in it at this point ?

Don't use the Control Center, try to stay in the command and edit manually, since the Control Center seems to be doing a lousy job.

Very sorry about bringing this up again. But Tricky, why don't
you ask him to ping the ip of DNS server before going to
resolv.conf at all?. If he can't reach that m/c ( which I think,
is out side the firewall ), how can his DNS ever work?.
--Sarin

Because at first he couldn't ping his own gateway and you were trying to tell him to ping his DNS which is totally backwards, now that he can ping his gateway and he has just reinstalled, he might want to look at his /etc/resolv.conf file to see if it setup his DNS entries correctly. If they did and then he responds, then from there I would have probably asked if I got back to him first told him to try to ping out by IP number instead of by name....

I'm a one step kind of person, I don't throw so much on them all at once cause it can get confusing at times.

I am sorry if that made you angry tricky. But I am still a newb and
you are an expert. I hope you can forgive me. And tomake things
a little more clear, I was always asking him to fix the gateway
first. Then he told me he is trying to ping google. All these
time you were advising him to fix DNS. But at this stage I felt
pinging an ip closer to him will be better idea. And since he
had to get the gateway fixed anyway, I asked him to ping
DNS which seemed to be sitting out side. I am sorry about this
jump but I never felt DNS should be fixed first to ping the outside
world. Thats why I gave him the google ip.
Once again, sorry if I hurt you.
--Sarin.

I could connect out to the Internet for about 30 seconds after rebooting... now not at all. I can't even ping my gateway.
Here's my files and setup:

Result of "ifconfig":
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 000:09:43:6D:FE
inet addr:192.168.1.103 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1 errors:21 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:25 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:250 (250.0 b) TX bytes:2630 (2.5 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xde00

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:90 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:90 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6300 (6.1 Kb) TX bytes:6300 (6.1 Kb)

Result of "route -n":
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

My "resolv.conf" file:
# search gothomcity.com
search gothomcity.com
nameserver 216.46.142.10
nameserver 216.46.129.10


# ppp temp entry

Any ideas?

Something definitely is wrong. Might be the NIC especially if it pings and works for 30 or seconds then stops on its own.

Try doing this after you lose your connection:

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 up
route add default gw 192.168.1.1

And see if that gets you back online. After that try pinging your gateway, if you get replies, then try pinging your DNS or outside your network, like yahoo.com !

Yes trickykid, I did what you said and it worked! I could ping my gateway, DNS and yahoo.com. But pinging yahoo was incredibly slow. (600ms or 6sec)
Although, it still only lasted for about 2 minutes. Then when I tried pinging again, an error msg occured:
"Destination Host Unreacheable"
when trying to ping anything - gateway, dns, internal ip's.

I dual boot this machine with windows2000, and windows2000 doesn't give me any problems.
Could it be the driver that Linux uses? I have a Davicom PCI network card. Is there somewhere I can check for an updated Linux driver for this network adapter?

Mike
P.S. You guys have been more helpful than the paid support from mandrakeexpert.com
Thanks.

Check out this site: http://www.fefe.de/linuxeth/ , couldn't find much info for that particular card but if you look at that page under the testimonials, they rate that card very poor and don't recommend them due to very bad flaws in the chip design. Might just want to pick up a new NIC if that's the case since this one gets connected then drops the connection so quickly.
I like to hear that.

I know I'm just a newbie but I did suggest changing out the NIC earlier. Just giving myself kudoshttp://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/images/icons/icon10.gif
Talking
Any reason why you can't try DHCP?

I don't think that is going to help in anyway at this point, since he can temporarily get connected with a static IP.

I'm going to get a 3com card then! With the 3c905c chipset.
In the meantime, what about editing this file?:
/etc/sysconfig/network

If I put a new network adapter in my machine, with the other one, because it's built into the motherboard... will Linux detect both of the cards?

See if you can disable the onbaord one in your BIOS. Even if you cna't, I don't think it will present much of a problem. Probably just be labeled as eth1

I have some good news!
I bought and installed a Linksys EtherFast network adapter into the Linux machine and I can access internally and externally with no problems now. So it was the garbage Davicom network card all this time.
Here's the second part to my problem:
I installed Apache, but I can only access apache internally to my Linksys router. We I try to access it from externally through a modem, it simply can't find the page. Here's my current config:
Linux box IP: 192.168.1.21
Linksys Router IP(gateway): 192.168.1.1
DNS: 216.46.129.10
Router WAN IP: 10.237.3.243

When I enter in the wan IP as the address from my modem computer, no page comes up. I have my router port forwarding turned on, for forwarding Port 80 to 192.168.1.21 (Linux box)
Still nothing.
Only works internally by using 192.168.1.21 or 10.237.3.243 in a web browser.
Any suggestions? Do you think my ISP is blocking port 80? Or is this WAN IP the correct IP I should be using to reach my router?
Is there a way to try it on Port 8080? What file do I change the port in?

Mike
P.S. You guys solved the first part of my problem before any of the paid support from Mandrakesoft could. Thanks!