Problem solved,
I was able to solve this one on my own - turns out is was a kernal ip routing config problem - thanks to all who attempted to assist me on and offline. For the record, I'm not sure why this happened, but I can tell you what I needed to do on both my machines to get them to connect to one another. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or something screwy that I did.
I connect to the internet identically on both my boxes using a DSL connection and a static IP address.
Firstly, even though I only had one local network (my own: 192.168.0.0) listed in the server manager's Local Networks panel, upon viewing the file /etc/e-smith/networks I noticed that there was another one listed there that I had removed from the server manager, but apparently did not remove from this file. That network in question was my opposite SME box.
I edited and removed the line referring to my opposite box. Also I noticed in the file /etc/sysconfig/static-routes that it referred also to my other box's network. So, I erased that file completely.
I restarted the network (/etc/init.d/network restart) and repeated this process on the other computer, which had the identical setup and BLAMMO everything worked like a charm.
I don't know what happened to both these machines, but I'm thankful everything is working again normally.
-
Steve