trouble connecting to @home cable modem

After vast efforts scouring the net and reading man pages and HOWTO's, I
still can't get my new RH 7 linux box to connect to the internet via
cox@home cable modem.

Can anyone shed light on the tcpdump data below, at the bottom? To me,
it looks like my box is asking for the MAC address of the gateway, and
getting no response. In fact, I get the same output if I take off the
cable connection. Hence, the connection is dead as a door nail. I've
done dhcpcd -h CX538-A eth0, and countless other things.

If you have solved this problem, I'd would sure like to get in contact
with you. I'm pretty much stumped at this point.

------------------------------------------------------------------
ifconfig output:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:BA:44:77:09
          inet addr:24.1.249.49  Bcast:24.1.255.255  Mask:255.255.248.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xe800

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:3924  Metric:1
          RX packets:1917 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1917 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

------------------------------------------------------------------
netstat -nr output:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt
Iface
24.1.248.0      0.0.0.0         255.255.248.0   U         0 0          0
eth0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U         0 0          0
lo
0.0.0.0         24.1.248.1      0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0
eth0
0.0.0.0         24.1.248.1      0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0
eth0

------------------------------------------------------------------
ping 24.1.248.1 output:
PING 24.1.248.1 (24.1.248.1) from 24.1.249.49 : 56(84) bytes of data.
>From 24.1.249.49: Destination Host Unreachable
>From 24.1.249.49: Destination Host Unreachable
>From 24.1.249.49: Destination Host Unreachable
...

------------------------------------------------------------------
tcpdump -i eth0 output:
Kernel filter, protocol ALL, datagram packet socket
tcpdump: listening on eth0
16:19:40.380943 > arp who-has 24.1.248.1 tell 24.1.249.49
(0:50:ba:44:77:9)
16:19:41.381069 > arp who-has 24.1.248.1 tell 24.1.249.49
(0:50:ba:44:77:9)
16:19:42.380945 > arp who-has 24.1.248.1 tell 24.1.249.49
(0:50:ba:44:77:9)
16:19:43.380948 > arp who-has 24.1.248.1 tell 24.1.249.49
(0:50:ba:44:77:9)
...