WNR1000 loopback issue and fix?

[andrue]

Ten minutes ago my laptop stopped connecting to my mail server. I thought I'd tracked it down and come up with a workaround but now I'm just confused.

I thought it was because my WNR1000 was not providing loopback facilities. I could connect to my server using the internal network address but not the domain name. I was a bit puzzled as to why it should be a problem a week after my connection went live and I switched to this router. Anyway I decided to try setting up a static route. That allowed me to connect using the domain name but apparently I was connecting on my external address. So I disabled the static route and it's still working.

I've done some Googling and the WNR1000 supposedly doesn't support loopback. The questions therefore are:

a)Does it?
b)If it doesn't then why did it take a week before it caused me a problem?
c)Did my static route fix something? For how long?
d)What the bleep just happened?

BTW:I did reasonable due diligence and my internet connection was up. TBBQM doesn't show a break either so presumably the router didn't reboot.

Any thoughts?

[Steve]

Sorry I know very little about networks Andrue, but logically data is being cached somewhere. I also know very little about ARP but may be worth a read.

http://www.tildefrugal.net/tech/arp.php

[andrue]

Sorry I know very little about networks Andrue, but logically data is being cached somewhere. I also know very little about ARP but may be worth a read.

http://www.tildefrugal.net/tech/arp.php

Thanks for that link, Steve. An informative read although I don't think it helped me. Everything seemed fine again this morning so for now it's just a weird glitch.