Gateway?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

Forgive me, please for such a rudimentary sort of question.  I've
been doing IP networking for more than 15 years, but I never really
plumbed the depths, and thus I only know the basics.

Quite simply, I'd like to know if the defaultrouter= IPv4 address
specified in my /etc/rc.conf file should be the same as whatever
I normally see as the first hop in an outgoing traceroute.  I ask
because for me these two are apparently not the same.  Here's what
I have:

defaultrouter="69.62.255.254"

and here is one example of a recent outgoing traceroute:

% traceroute 74.125.239.148
traceroute to 74.125.239.148 (74.125.239.148), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  86.255-62-69.res.dyn.surewest.net (69.62.255.86)  28.884 ms  31.395 ms  30.024 ms
 2  216.0.55.209 (216.0.55.209)  26.486 ms  26.024 ms  25.850 ms
 3  ae1d0.mcr1.roseville-ca.us.xo.net (216.156.1.77)  25.384 ms  27.298 ms  27.060 ms
 4  vb1510.rar3.sanjose-ca.us.xo.net (216.156.0.153)  27.289 ms  34.022 ms  36.213 ms
 5  207.88.14.226.ptr.us.xo.net (207.88.14.226)  26.993 ms  26.567 ms  25.568 ms
 6  216.156.84.30.ptr.us.xo.net (216.156.84.30)  24.800 ms  26.432 ms  25.845 ms
 7  209.85.249.5 (209.85.249.5)  26.033 ms  110.066 ms  28.663 ms
 8  66.249.95.31 (66.249.95.31)  26.985 ms  25.285 ms  28.066 ms
 9  nuq05s02-in-f20.1e100.net (74.125.239.148)  26.895 ms  27.434 ms  27.063 ms


P.S.  I don't know if it makes any difference or not, but I'm on a
residential DSL line, I have two assigned static IP addresses, and
I have been told that the router in my closet is set to "bridged"
mode.

P.P.S.  I am exploring all this because I have been having increasingly
serious but maddeningly intermittent connectivity problems for some
several weeks now.  The timing when these problems began appeared,
perhaps only coincidently, to closely coincide with the date on which
I was "upgraded" from a 3Mbps DSL line to a 6Mbps DSL line, at my request.
(And I do wonder now if that change may have somehow produced my current
intermittent non-connectivity.  Unfortunately, my ISP was recently bought
out by a bigger company, and it now appears that the new bigger company
no longer employs any persons in either their first or second level tech
support teams who even know what a gateway is.)