[CUWiN-Dev] default gateway/direct node access

[tom]

I've been poking around some of the Race St. nodes and have discovered a 
couple of issues that I was hoping for some guidance on.

First, Laura's node. With version 0.5.7 software and some good luck there 
seems to be a strong connection to Zach's node. It had been flaky previously, 
so maybe my strong signal was just a fluke. Regardless, however, I can't get 
it to automatically route data through Zach's node. If I perform a manual 
"route add default *zach's id*" then it works great. That's obviously not a 
permanent solution, though. Rebooting the node kills it, and it just won't 
automatically see what to do. Any ideas on why that might be happening? Could 
it be that it doesn't consider the signal reliable enough to use Zach's node 
as a default gateway? Is there a way to hack it so that for the time being at 
least it'll always use Zach's node (I realize this isn't helpful from a 
development standpoint, but it would be nice for Laura to have Internet 
access again). Might doing the /etc/permanent trick on the proper 
configuration file do it?

Second, Zach's node itself. From Laura's node I can SSH into it and work with 
it fine. But sitting right outside his house I can't seem to connect to it 
with my laptop, I can't ping it or anything. I can't even pick up traffic by 
scanning the subnet with Ethereal. Is this by design, or is something fishy? 
I can see most nodes fine sitting outside, I don't know why Zach's would be 
so different.

Any help is appreciated as always,
Tom