Newbie Issues (networking w/ FreeBSD)

[Jon Adams]

Hi all,

  First a qualifier:  I am FreeBSD noob, I have had exposure to it for about 
two years, but I just built my first FreeBSD box last nite... fresh install 
over an old (and extremely tweaked) Red Hat Linux box....  After much 
procrastination, I have finally made the change (been stuck on linux since 98).

The (main) problem ->

 My network connectivity is ridiculously slow...  I had OpenSSH timeout set to 
the default, 120 secs, and the messages file said the connections (on the same 
100MBPs hub mind you) were timing out before authentication (password).  I went 
in and doubled the timeout, and after a long wait (I didnt check the time) I 
could get a password prompt...  at first I thought this was just a SSH problem, 
but it is the same if I use telnet (or any other network service).  I have 
several devices on my Lan including 2 (eww) Windows XP laptops, and a PS2 and a 
XP workstation.  I have 3 public IPs, (Speakeasy is the ISP) The laptops use a 
LinkSys 54G Wireless Hub and one public IP (its plugged into a NetGear 4 port 
hub), I split another IP with the Desktop and PS2, and the FreeBSD box will 
have its own IP, of course the final port is the uplink.  There are absolutly 
no connectivity problems with the other machines.  The FreeBSD box cannot 
connect to the dns servers (on three different networks) or much of anything 
else.

Here is the really weird part, when I run an NMAP scan from inside the network 
and one from outside the network, the box is reachable (NMAP can see the ports 
and determine the OS), but nothing can connect to it (all connections time out).


Any suggestions would help:

about the box

FreeBSD version 5.1 Release
CPU Celeron 733, 384 (3x128) MB Ram
30GB WD HD, 768 MB Swap, the rest in various partitions
12x4x40 CD Burner
48x CD Drive
SiS 6326 Video
RTL8139 chip network card (rl0) using static IP (I know I read about issues 
using this card and DHCP... but I am not using DHCP)


I dont know if this is a side effect of the networking problem, but my Xwindows 
is incredible slow as well.  This is with both KDE and Gnome.  I havent seen 
any other weirdness whatsoever in the system logs.

off the topic, if anybody could point me at how to build ipfw I would 
appreciate it, i have seen the basic tutorials via google, but have no idea 
where to get the kernel sources to do the install.

-- 
Jonathan Keirre Adams
PhD Candidate, Computer Information Systems
Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences
Nova Southeastern University
Web: http://www.scis.nova.edu/~jonaadam