Very Computer

After several long late nights I have been unable to get my ethernet
network up and running.  In general, I prefer to hack things out myself,
but this time I am stumped and I feel I am missing something pretty
fundamental.  Detailed information on the problem follows below.  Any
suggestions, comments or out-right fixes would be much appreciated.  

All the best, Jay Foster

P.S. Sorry for the length of the post but I am trying to include as much
useful information in possible.  I have noticed the "please send more
information" post fairly often in this newsgroup.

Summary of the Problem:

There is no response from the ethernet network.  FTP, rlogin, telnet and
ping are all able to translate trivial hostnames in host ipaddresses, but
when they try to connect to the other machine they all stop and the
normal connection message never appears.

To compound the difficulty on a couple of occassions, for no apparent
reason, a connection with the other machine has been established.  
However, the connection has been very slow, and a short time into the
session locks up.

Comments:

1. Two 486 DXII66s running Linux 1.2.11 are being connected with an
Intel Ethernet Express (I appreciate that the kernel driver for this
card is still under development, but I suspect the problem is with my
configuration rather than with the kernel)

2. These cards have been rock solid running with WfWg 3.11 so there
are no IRQ or port conflicts or other hardware problems.  The cards
have passed all diagnostics under DOS with their "softset" utility.

3. The ethernet card is successfully identified and configured at startup.
'ifconfig' shows that the card's IRQ and port have been properly
identified

4. I have been able to get telnet and ftp TO my machine FROM remote
machines via the slip connection.  This seems to place the problem at the
ethernet end of things.

5. After attempting to connection from one machine to the other 'route'
indicates that packets have been sent to the ethernet device - i.e.
following a 'route' command there are packets recorded under Use.  
Similarly, following an attempt to connect to the other machine 'ifconfig'
reports that there have been RX and TX packets and it also reports
errors in transmission and reception.

This information leads me to believe that one of the following is
happening:

(a) packets are being send to the ethernet device but are not being
shunted to the network
(b) packets are being transmitted but they are not being received.

What follows is information about the system's network configuration:

The /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 file is configured as follows:

# Get HOSTNAME from hostname file

HOSTNAME=`cat /etc/HOSTNAME`

# Attach the loopback device.

/sbin/ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
/sbin/route add -net 127.0.0.0

# TCP address configuration

 IPADDR="192.178.16.1"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
NETWORK="192.178.16.0"      
BROADCAST="192.178.16.255"

# Configure Ethernet Device

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 ${IPADDR} netmask ${NETMASK} broadcast
        ${BROADCAST}

# Add Ethernet Network to Routing Table and Add Gateways

/sbin/route add -net ${NETWORK} device eth0

# Inform User That TCP/IP configuration is complete
echo 'Ethernet TCP/IP configuration completed.'

Following bootup ifconfig reports the following:

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Bcast:127.255.255.255  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP BROADCAST LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:2000      
                 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0

eth0      Link encap:10Mbps Ethernet  HWaddr 00:AA:00:33:3B:94
                inet addr:192.178.16.1  Bcast:192.178.16.255    
        Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500      
        Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0x300

The ifconfig report for the other machine is the same except the
ipaddress is 192.178.16.2 and the Base address is 0x340.  

Following an attempt at a connection with the other machine 'route -n'
reports the following:

Kernel routing table
Destination  Gateway   Genmask         Flags MSS    Window Use Iface
192.178.16.0    *        255.255.255.0   U     1436   0             2    eth0
127.0.0.0          *        255.0.0.0           U     1936   0             0     lo

The hosts file contains the following:

# For loopbacking
127.0.0.1               localhost

# Local Network
192.178.16.1            eliot.aporia.edu eliot
192.178.16.2            palladio.aporia.edu palladio
130.15.129.12           telnet1.queensu.ca telnet1
128.100.160.1           epas.utoronto.ca epas

The network file contains the following:

default         0.0.0.0
loopback        127.0.0.0
aporia.edu      192.178.16.0