Ok I had this problem with fedora 2 before and cleared it up (actually it cleared up on reboot; not this time). Having too much frustration at it and hearing the wonders of suse9.1 I finally got it.

fantasitic distro!

1- I have a Conexant modem (will configure later) and a real modem
2- configured serial modem ('query modem' reports alls well)

Situation ; I get to the point where you see 'loggin on to network' and then it immediately drops the connection (timed out as davidphillips said) and redials again; forever

3-I did a 'ln -s /etc/resolv.conf /etc/ppp/resolv.conf
4-I have the resolv.conf cleared up (yes I know I haven't a connection yet)
5- looking at my /var/log/messages....phew that file is huge and I don't understand any of it, so I didn't post it.... If anyone knows where to look I'll post the relevant section.

Diagnostic messages would help!

Try:
cat /var/log/messages | grep pppd

...this should show you the ones relevant to what you're doing. If there's still too much, just grab the last, say, 20 lines of the file by doing:

cat /var/log/messages |grep pppd | tail -20

...then someone should be able to get an idea as to what's what.

ok heres the log

according to man pppd, its a problem with my isp?????

"Failed to open /dev/ttySL0: No such device" - that give me cause for concern.

This is what I think is happening:

Your modem is plugged into the first serial port, ttyS0 right?

So, you connect to the modem, dial the number, then it tries to make the ppp connection - that is, the actual network connection.

ppp fails - it can't open ttySL0, it gives up.

Conclusion: the device node ttySL0 is missing (I have one on my machine). It's quite likely that this only needs to be a symbolic link to another device, but may need a mknod - getting out of my depth here!

Anybody?

true; how come query modem goes throught fine then??????
OK I'm confused.

Query modem goes through ttyS0, ppp is trying to use ttySL0. They have the same PHYSICAL port, but are different devices to the operating system.