I am baffled. Suggestions about where to even start welcomed.

I have root, user1 and user2 on my machine. If I boot and login to any of these accounts using gdm my IP is available, but once I log out I and log back in again through gdm to any of these accounts my IP connection is gone and I have to reboot.

I can ping my IP for each of these accounts from vterminal (ctrl+alt F4 etc.) but not gterm.

ifcongig -a says my connection remains active.

I know I have set up something wrong, but what?

I have: eth0 + dhcp + dynamic DNS + router/gateway + cable modem - a simple straight forward configuration!

I have tried several other things to trace where to look but nothing works, e.g. like deactivating and then trying to activate eth0 (it won't), or looking at PAM config (could be a permission problem but I don't see how).

I tried one other forum a few days ago, but got no helpful answers - just admonishments for being in root.

Fedora C2
Gnome 2.6