the linux networking utilities hate me

[Seth Gordon]

Until last night, I had an AirPort base station assigned to IP address 
192.168.1.11.  My Linux (Debian stable) laptop has a wireless Ethernet 
card as device eth1, and the configuration for the card, in 
/etc/network/interfaces, describes it as "pointopoint 192.168.1.11 ... 
gateway 192.168.1.11 ..." and everything worked just fine.  If I typed 
"/sbin/ifconfig eth1", the output would report the point-to-point link, 
and if I typed "route -n", the output would begin something like this:

Network      Gateway      ... Device
192.168.1.11 *            ... eth1
0.0.0.0      192.168.1.11 ... eth1

Then I swapped out the AirPort, and replaced it with a Linksys base 
station whose default IP address is 192.168.1.245.  No problem, I 
thought.  I'll just replace "11" with "245" in /etc/network/interfaces, 
reboot, and everything should work just as before.  But it doesn't.  I 
*can* access the Web interface of the base station itself by typing 
"http://192.168.1.245" into my browser, but I can't access anything else.

Even when I explicitly type "/sbin/ifconfig eth1 ... pointopoint 
192.168.1.245", and then type "/sbin/ifconfig eth1", the interfaces is 
no longer flagged as point-to-point.  Now, when I type "route -n", the 
output begins

Network       Gateway      ... Device
192.168.1.245 0.0.0.0      ... eth1

I've tried "route add -host 192.168.1.245 eth1" and "route add -host 
192.168.1.245 gw 192.168.1.13" (.13 is the address of my laptop's 
wireless card), with the same results.

What am I doing wrong?  Is there another configuration file that I 
forgot about?  Is a misconfiguration on the wireless base station 
causing the kernel routing tables to become confused?  Am I just cursed?

// seth gordon // sethg at ropine.com // http://dynamic.ropine.com/yo/ //