My ISP has me on a 10.0.0.0/24 IP block. I'm am trying to ping the default gateway:

ping -I eth0 -c 1 10.0.0.1

but when I try to ping it as root I get an error message:

ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted

route -n shows my routing tables:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 10.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 <--

ifconfig -a eth0 shows my configuration:

inet addr:10.0.0.112 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

I guess I'm not sure why I can't ping my default gateway but I can browse the Internet and ping other hosts (like yahoo.com)

The gateway doesn't drop ICMP packets by any chance?

If your not sure, what distro are you running?

Red Hat 7.3 -- but wouldn't I would get a timeout message instead of an operation not permitted message if the gateway dropped packets?

yeah, but i thought that i remember reading in a guide somewhere that the host machine could send a message back similar to that one...i think it was: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resourc...-tutorial.html

otherwise, i have no idea....your able to ping other machines using the same command, only with the different IP, correct?

Isn't that the message you'd get if a firewall (your gateway is most likely a firewall) was set to REJECT instead of DROP?

Yes, I can ping other hosts outside of my network (it doesn't appear that there are any other hosts on my network, which is really odd since I live in a complex with about 600 other apartments).

I believe I read the same part of the tutorial you were refering to. According to the tutorial, " The following reject types are currently valid: icmp-net-unreachable, icmp-host-unreachable, icmp-port-unreachable, icmp-proto-unreachable, icmp-net-prohibited and icmp-host-prohibited. The default error message is to send an port-unreachable to the host."

I get a "ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted" but I suppose you could set it up to be a custom message, too.

Very strange how 2 different ISP policies differ. When I was with AT&T Broadband they didn't care what I pinged or scanned. Now I'm with Qwest and they have me on private 10.0.0.0/24 network and won't give me static IP because they no longer support them. BS IMHO.

Ok, now I'm really confused. I hooked up my labtop (Windows XP)directly to the modem and now I can ping the gateway. Hell, I can even telnet to it. Can anyone tell me why I wouldn't be able to do this from my router?