...

...

Can anyone tell me what I have to do to connect my SuSE firewall directly to my Cisco router?

I have tried using a crossover cable, but the router is sending arp requests and the firewall is not responding to these.

Are they in the same subnet?

Yes.

example:

Router has LAN iface 196.38.2.161/28 and firewall connected via xover cable has 196.38.2.162/28.

1. How can you see the ARP requests (and missing replies)? 2. If you try to ping the router from the firewall, do you see arp requests (and maybe replies)? 3. Have you tried this without any firewalling? 4. Is the Ethernet speed the same on both devices? Autosensing is prone to fail ever so often. Your IP configuration looks good. Maybe you could give us the output from: Linux box: ifconfig && route -n Cisco: sh ip int brief sh ip route HTH Tobias