We just got a linux box to use for a webserver. It runs Ubuntu Breezy. Got everything we needed installed on it, and when I assign it a static IP, it won't connect to the internet anymore, but I can connect to the machine from another machine on the network. I made sure that the DNS was set to the router's IP. I even added the external DNS servers that the router gets.

When I switch it back to DHCP, it works, but it's very slow. Reminds me of a 56K modem. I have been using Webmin to make all the changes. And obviously, I can't leave it on DHCP because then I wouldn't be able to use it as a server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

You need to set the gateway address in the network config to that of your router/proxy server/internet gateway.

This is probably being auto populated with DCHP but your missing it when you do it manualy.

Well, when you look at the settings, it lets you change the IP Address, the Broadcast, and the Netmask. Is the broadcast the one that is supposed to be set to the router/gateway.

Further investigation has led me to believe that there is a DNS problem somewhere. When on DHCP, I said it was slow, but only when going from one domain name to the other. For example going to Google.com is slow, but doing a search on it is normal speed. Then going to Yahoo.com is slow because it's a different domain name.

The solution has been found. I figured I would post my findings for others that have similar problems.

After plugging in a Windows box to the same network cable, I ruled out the possibility of bad cabling.

We have a Netopia modem/router for our DSL. The problem was that the DHCP was handing out the modem's address for DNS and for some reason, the modem was not forwarding the request out to the actual DNS servers from the ISP. You wouldn't think so, seeing as how DNS communication should be standard reguardless of OS. Anyways, it would time out waiting for a DNS request. So I replaced the entries on the Linux box to the actual external DNS servers, and took the modem's entry out completely. Also, I found that Webmin keeps the Gateway setting in a different module. That's what kept tricking me and why static addressing never worked. It kept setting the gateway to 0.0.0.0 instead of the modem's address.

Hope this helps out someone.