Hullo All, I'm trying to connect my debian box to our windows network (amidst many scowls from the network administrator who doesn't trust all this here linux stuff.) ("Who on earth uses linux?, I mean all that basic command line stuff, it's like going back to DOS...."). We have a few subnetworks connected to router boxes, I am trying only to connect to the immediate subnetwork my work winbox is on, address which is 192.168.11.0. (to start with anyway, heh heh!) I have linux box pinging itself on loopback and 192.168.11.106 (its assigned network IP), also by name (TRX850) but not any of the machines on the network. ifconfig also shows network card to be present and correct. I have netstat -rn showing 192.168.11.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U dummy0 0.0.0.0 192.168.11.100 UG dummy0 (router box IP for this network) /etc/hosts has had all IP addresses and names on the local network edited in, e.g 127.0.0.1 localhost 192.168.11.106 TRX850/TCL TRX850 192.168.11.102 jenny/TCL jenny /etc/resolv.conf I have left empty /etc/networks has localnet 192.168.11.0 TCL 192.168.11.0 /etc/hosts.conf has order hosts, bind multi on. This is a pretty basic question, I know, and I ought to know this stuff by now, but can anyone look at what I've done and go ...."ahhh, you silly thing, you've....."???? Thanks! Jenny PS David (Akula) did you get my mail about the poster for linuxday?