So I know there are some dns issues pinging other hosts on a local network (there have been since the last firmware... and it seems they have started fixing the resolv.conf situation--still not complete, though), however, now I can't ping my n900 at all. Not by hostname nor by IP. My router sees the n900's connection just fine, as well.

I used to be able to do this pre-51, but now I can't do anything remotely... ssh, ping, whatever (from my laptop/desktop to the n900). I looked to see if the vpnc stuff had messed up any configurations in the routing, but mine looked fine.

Has anyone else had this issue?

You might want to check this post to explain why the N900 doesn't respond to pings after the 51 FW upgrade.

Wouldn't explain why you can't ssh into it though. Maybe try reinstalling the ssh server package? My sshd survived the FW upgrade fine. Can you check that sshd is running and use netstat to comfirm that it's listening on the right port?

Thanks for the information... unfortunately, that post's issue didn't match up with mine.

Also, sshd is running and lsof -i :22 gives:
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
sshd 688 root 3u IPv4 3062 TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)

Oh well. Remember that many home routers hide wlan clients from each other. If it was definitely 51 that broke your network, I can't confirm... I'm pinging and ssh'ing away quite happily between my N900 and my PC over WLAN.

Me too, i dont have any of this problems.

i toggled the power saving on this connection to moderate and back to maximum... that made it all work again.

now, if i could just get /etc/resolv.conf to contain localhost to point to dnsmasq (so I can ping other machines on my network from the n900 by hostname i'd be all set)....