Networking novice needs help

[Paul Civati]

Andrew <andrew.hodgson at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> reason I'm telling you all this is because I've done a net install on
> the new box (using DHCP), installed the Kern-Developer dist, and then
> reconfigured the box to fit into my internal network, and now I can't
> telnet to it, or even ping it. I get

What's the output of 'ifconfig -a' say?

> I have set the netmask on all machines to be 255.255.0.0 - I don't
> really know why, I need to learn more about what the netmask does. If

That should be okay.

netmask is basically what is says ;) it's a mask that defines how
large the IP network is, that you are part of.

255.255.0.0 basically says that you have a /16 size network (class B
in ye olden speake).  Have a look at RFC 1878 which has a nice table
which should help you see how it works.

-Paul-