I'm located in Austin(in case that's important) and I just got a firewall/router set up with the help of a friend. However, I started noticing a disturbing amount of packet loss...if I pinged a well known domain like yahoo.com, I could get anywhere from 10 to 29% packet loss! Note that these pings are from the router/firewall machine itself. WHen I talked to the service representatives, they wanted a trace route...so I did it, and discovered that the first hop timed out on me, while the rest of them were fine. When they found out I was using Linux, they told me that I had to switch the cable modem to directly connect to a windows box for them to fix the problem. I told them goodbye, saying I would do it later. I did end up connecting the windows box directly. When I did a trace route with the windows box directly hooked up to the cable modem, the first hop was now extremely fast, only 7 - 10 ms. I don't know what the problem is, and neither does the guy who helped me set up my router/firewall. Any ideas?

If I get this clear, then there's no problem now ... ?

Packet loss is often due to funnny physical ethernet connection. Are you using ethernet?

Bert

I forgot the important detail that when I got the firewall set up again, the hop was once more timing out. And still is...lemme check real quick...yup, the hop is timing out when the linux box pings it. I guess the problem could be ethernet, but its only the first hop, and the following hops all work.