I have a static IP address 195.137.*.* that is directed through the router to a local address of 192.168.1.30 (assigned by DHCP). When I ping this address on the LAN I get a response as expected. However when I ping this address (195.137.*.*) when I'm not on the LAN and just connected to the Internet through dial-up I don't get any response. I can however open the web page this system is hosting! Wierd? Pretty new to this so any help would be appericated and I can supply any more information if reqired. Thanks in advance.

Not wierd at all...pretty typical. Most devices, and firewalls disable ICMP (which is the protocol to ping) to prevent an internet attack known as the "ping of death"...that's when someone on the internet pings you about a gizillion times so that you pretty much can't do anything else other than respond to the ping. Look in your router or firewall for ICMP setting, guarenteed there's a setting to disable/allow it.

Actually, the "ping of death" was an attack that involved sending a small number of oversized packets to a host. It did not require anything remotely close to "a gizillion times". And in fact, the ping of death is very old news. You're probably thinking of a ping flood. That being said, in the absence of more information I would tend to agree that the reason O can't ping his Internet-facing IP address from outside the network is that the router is dropping ICMP. O, do you have any particular need to ping the router? Are you trying to accomplish something, or are you just curious as to why it doesn't respond to ping?

Thanks for both of the quick responses. I've checked the firewall settings and there is an option to block ICMP as D stated, but presently this is not selected. To the point that iamc made, I'm actually trying to create a VPN setup for connecting to a home system when away. I have managed to connect to the VPN from a couple of systems when on the LAN, but presently having trouble when dialing to the Interent and then trying to connect. I thought that the lack of response from the ping may have something to do with this issue? Thanks again, you've both been very helpful.

The lack of ping response may indicate another underlying problem that would prevent VPN from working, but not necessarily. What router do you have, and what are you using for VPN? How have you got it set up?

The router is also the ADSL modem and is a Belkin 54g wireless unit (http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201576&pcount=&Product_Id=158009&Section.Section_Path=%2FRoot%2FNetworking%2FWirelessNetworking%2F80211gWi%2E%2E%2Etworking%2F). Using a trial version of Microsoft Windows 2000 server for the VPN server, and Windows 2000/XP machines for clients. The VPN server/clients are set-up to use TCP/IP and not IPX/SPX as I found the latter protocols caused a few problems before I even got stated. If there are benefits from these I may try the once I have this up and running correctly. As the router performs the DHCP on the home LAN I have set the VPN to obtain and assign address from customised static IP address pool from 192.168.1.200 - 192.168.1.216 (just for ref. the router has the IP 192.168.1.1). I have also disabled multilink connections both at the VPN server end and the client end. This seemed to correct the problem of not being able to connect even when connected to the local network. On the VPN server side I have both PPTP and L2TP enabled and the clients are set to automatically negotiate which protocol they use when connecting (PPTP seems to be the preferred choice as discovered through a little experimentation). I have (for testing purposes) disabled the firewall on the router and even opened the ports 1723 as I believe these are used for VPN? Right, I think that's about everything, but do say if I've missed something highly important out! Thanks again.