I use a Red hat 7.3 system as a router with IPTABLES. It works awesome untill you reboot and for some strange reason it thinks it needs a gateway on the internal interface. And it makes it the same as the ip. 192.168.2.1

1. why is it putting it there?
2. how do I make it stop?

If I clear it and reboot again it works.

I am using the config utility in X to fix it. Is it not applying it right?
Any help is appreciated.

When you configured the NIC, it most have propagated the IP address to the gateway field. You should not configure any gateway at all for your internal NIC (obviously). If I remember right, the actual config files are buried some where in /etc/sysconfig/netinfo/ or netstart/ or something like that.

Poke around in /etc, you'll find it. One quick way to locate the offending file would be like this:
# grep -R '192.168.2.1' /etc/
The -R means "recursive" so it will search all the files and subdirectories of /etc for files that contain 192.168.2.1. When you find the one that lists that IP as a gateway, just remove that line from the file (or comment it out).

I think that is it. Thanx.
I found it in /etc/sysconfig/network