Whenever i cant get on msn, it always flags up that the gateway is dodgey however thats never the case. Its usually a fault with my ISP or MSN itself which is why i cant get on.
Gateways are usually only required if your computer is sitting behind a router / firewall or server, and you need to point your computer to a specific place to get online. On mostly every machine i've done support on tho, these are set to automatic and the computer works them out for itself.
If you are online, obviously you are looking at the MSC, then your gateway is fine and MSN is having a funny 5 minutes