Unable to access internet sites without keepalive ping running (wired card, Ubuntu 5)
 

I have a somewhat strange problem as far as I can tell. I am running Ubuntu Breezy Badger (5 dot whatever) on an older Dell. If I try to access sites outside my lan, e.g. google (can't post the url because I have less than 3 posts - pretty stupid restriction if you ask me, just don't let people wrap url tags around it), I eventually time out. Pinging any external site from a terminal "awakens" the connection and will let me access the internet from Firefox, update my system with Synaptic, etc.

Currently I have a keep-alive ping running with

but I feel bad about wasting anyone's bandwidth :D. Any ideas as how to resolve this issue without a keepalive ping? The interesting thing is that my co-worker has the exact same physical system (Dell Dimension XPS T500) and is having the same issue on Ubuntu 6.

Any ideas?

Don't worry - we know Google's URL ;-)

How do you connect to the internet?