>if I change the netmask of the server it can no longer talk to the >router because it is in a different ip network ie 192.168.11.55/22 can't >talk to 192.168.11.1/24 (you can fake it on linux with iproute - see my >other answer to this thread).
That does not look correct. Just to see how it works, I just chaged the netmask of my pc from /24 to /16, it is working router - 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0 pc1 - 192.168.1.50/255.255.0.0, gw 192.168.1.1, broadcast 192.168.255.255 This pc1 could reach all other machines on 192.168.1.0/24 network with the above configuration, also it could access internet using 192.168.1.1 as the gateway. In your example, network 192.168.11.55/22 (netmask 255.255.252.0) means 192.168.8.0 to 192.168.11.255. It could very well reach 192.168.11.1. But on the other hand 192.168.11.1/24 could reach only 192.168.11.0 to 192.168.11.255 machines.
