Networking Issues

[rleasle]

For the routing issue I had, I used the route command:

Code:

$ route -n

Destination    Gateway        Genmask        Flags    Metric    Ref Use    Iface
0.0.0.0        0.0.0.0        0.0.0.0        U    302    0   0    wlan0
169.254.0.0    0.0.0.0        255.255.0.0    U    302    0   0    wlan0

The above output was what it looked like when I was having my problems. That netmask value (255.255.0.0) was only allowing me to access part of the internet.

Two alarm bells from the routing table alone are that there is no gateway address for the default route and the local subnet "looks suspect":

The gateway for the destination 0.0.0.0 should be the IP address of your router adn definately not 0.0.0.0 , eg 192.168.1.1 and there should also the G flag should be set as it is the gateway route.

The second entry in the routing table is the subnet for the local LAN, this is a 169.254.x.x address which part of the APIPA Subnet which clients can fall back to if DHCP registration fails. 
You should see your local IP subnet with the correct mask eg 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0

If the local subnet route was correct but the gateway wasn't, the client will still be be able to talk to local devices but nothing on the internet.

Yes indeed, this was a messed up route table. It's what the system did "for me" before I could define my static IP and gateway. Unfortunately, it still tried to keep that subnet. I had to disable the DHCP client service to keep a clean, correct route table after reboot. Helps to have a working route table from another machine for comparison.