a direct connection called eth1 has been established between linux and my computer
24.220.200.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
what is the 24.220.200.0 subnet? i'm guessing that this is the ip assigned from the cable modem, since it in an internet routable address.... but you say its a "direct connection" between linux and your computer, which is unclear. is this a hub or a crossover cable?
i don't understand how, if this is your connection between two comptuers, that you're using a routable ip address.. and since your dns ip's are in the range, this must actually be your connection to the internet... you should be able to browse on the linux machine.
my guess is that eth1 is connected to the cablemodem. eth0 has not yet been configured, and you need to set an ip for eth0 to use for the internal subnet. since eth0 does not show up, i'm guessing that the kernel module has not been loaded, or modules.conf doesn't have an alias for it.
what kind of cards are eth0 and eth1 ? running lspci will tell you. (please post this info) also in modules.conf (post this too) , check for 'alias eth0 xxxxxxx' and 'alias eth1 xxxxxxx' , where the xxxxxxx's should be the name of the kernel modules associated with the net cards.
here is my question besides got any other ideas .......... is it possible that i HAVE to have eth0 up before guidedog will even consider using it as part of the ip masq?
yes, its a must. the device must be funtioning before you apply packet filtering rules on it.