Connection mysteriously fails on laptop! Wired + wireless

[w0kKiD]

I have a laptop I recently resurrected which had Gentoo on it and I've been going about the business of updating it. It has a wireless PCMCIA adapter which I have been using to have internet access through my router at home.

Everything's been working fine for days as I've been emerging all sorts of things. After an emerge which failed because there was a file collision to do with GIMP (ie completely network unrelated), the internet has stopped working! So I went about diagnosing the problem:

1) I thought my router might have clammed up as it does sometimes but it works fine and two other computers in the house have an internet connection.

2) I thought the wireless adapter is playing up as it is bound to do, but no, the lights are flashing, the router registers the connection, so does the laptop, it's OK.

3) I tried connecting the laptop with an ethernet cable, which ALWAYS works, but no, same problem. Router logs connection but internet doesn't work on the laptop.

The REALLY interesting bit: my desktop PC easily pings the laptop whether the laptop is connected wirelessly or wired, and the laptop even pings the desktop. BUT, the laptop doesn't ping the router, it times out, and it certainly can't ping anything in the outside world, ie google.com.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[w0kKiD]

It seems my router works in mysterious ways... Soon after the internet failed on the Gentoo laptop, it failed on another wirelessly connected Windows laptop (yet the internet still worked on my desktop PC). So out of desparation I performed a hard reset of the router (ie unplugged and plugged back into mains), and everything works fine!

I am sorry for clogging up the forums with this now useless thread.

EDIT: Which is not so useless now, because the problem has reoccured, and is referenced in a newer post.