thanks for the quick response. another question. when i only have one nic in my linux box it performs as desired and as expected. its got an ip that is not a local, which is good. now, i also run a counter-strike server on this box. i thought it would be a good idea to throw another nic in and have it run on the lan also. that way people dont have to search for the server in the long list of internet servers, it would just pop up under lan servers. i plug in the new nic, configure it. it grabs an ip from my dhcp server, and the outside ip stops working. people from the outside cant connect to the box anymore. a quick check shows that all internet traffic is now routed through the lan, which doesnt work for me. is there something i need to do that will specify to only use eth1(eth1 being the newly added nic) for local traffic?