Ping Arp problems from FreeBSD 4.6

[spurdy88]

I've just installed a FreeBSD 4.6 Samba box at a site running local DNS. They have an ADSL connection supplied by us running through an Alcatel Speedtouch Pro. Before BSD arrived today, all the Win95/98 PC's were DHCP clients to the ADSL modem. They all had net access working fine.

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The setup as of today:-
FreeBSD 10.0.0.254/24

ADSL Modem 10.0.0.138/8 - handing DHCP 10.0.0.1 upwards.

Win PC's after converting to static IP - 10.0.0.50/24 upwards to not conflict with DHCP's - Default Gateway 10.0.0.138.

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BSD installed today, converted Windows machines to static IP's and they can still ping the Internet. FreeBSD can ping Win9x's and vice versa but BSD cannot ping the internal interface of the ADSL modem even though the Win9x's can.

arp -a on FreeBSD reports the IP but the MAC address as unspecified or similar. I've tried adding an arp entry but no joy. I've added entries in the routing tables and a permanent lease to the BSD box on the Modem - still no Joy. I've disabled DHCP on the Modem to no avail.

I've tried setting BSD to 10.0.0.254/8 and i've checked that the NIC is running simplex....still no luck.

My gut instinct is that if i set BSD to be a dhclient and then set it back to Static IP it'll work - sods law says the arp tables will flush whilst i'm away on another job and I can't leave them high and dry like that.

Tomorrow - I'm going to try a FreeBSD 4.4 box, but that still doesn't fix this problem - Please help me, my brain hurts....

 

[spurdy88]

Fixed it - most stupid fault i've ever seen.

We have had instances in the past where the onboard 10/100 SIS card will only talk on a 10/100M Network. If you plugged them onto a 10mb network they wouldn't talk, presumably a limitation of the BSD driver (they work in Windows).

Now that it worked on the 10mb network, I discounted it and wrongly presumed the problem was with the ADSL Modem.

It appears that the 10/100 driver chose which 10mb nodes it wanted to talk to and evidently it didn't like the Modem. After putting a D-Link DFE530TX card in, it work like a dream.

Thanks for your help anyway.