Well, we've made a breakthrough, although we're not quite on yet. I ifconfig'd eth0 to 192.168.1.2, and the modem's admin page came up at 192.168.1.254. comprookie2000, thanks for finding the user's manual. I have tons of info now about the modem and the isp. The modem found a couple dns servers, but the browswer still isn't finding content servers.

I tried several nameserver options for resolv.conf, including (1) the two dns servers listed by the modem, (2) the modem itself with no other entries, and (3) just an empty file. None of them worked. In (2), firefox was saying "couldn't establish a connection" instead of "couldn't find the server". I didn't put a "search" line in the file. What does it do? Isn't it for finding specific machines? Is that needed for an internet connection?

I also added the modem as the default gateway.

So dhcp hasn't worked yet, and a fixed ip address has sort-of/almost worked.

Hacker-X,

Glad to see you are making progress. Sorry for not responding sooner.

Some where in the router configuration pages you should find information on DHCP. Most routers you can control how many addresses the server will hand out, and the range of addressing to use.

There is nothing wrong using static IP addresses and running a DHCP server for those machines that occasionally connect. From a security point of view, if this router has wireless, you want to limit the number of IP addresses it will hand out. In fact most routers allow you to limit the connections to known MAC addresses. A MAC address is the burned address on a card the manufacturer puts there.

Resolv.conf should have entries of the DNS servers of your ISP. Many routers will pass that stuff to the client machines after a DHCP request.

Now that you can get the interface on your system to talk to the router, try pinging different addresses to see how far you can get. ie ping your own system, ping the router, ping the DNS addresses of your ISP etc. This will give us some idea of how far you can get.

If I was to define what a Gateway is, it is a machine ( router ) you go through to get to the outside world, in this case the internet. The reason you need to define it, has to do with the routing table the kernel has. When you send an IP packet, the kernel looks in its routing table to decide where to send it. A system can have many connections to the outside world. Most home systems only have one, but the design is for many. The kernel routing table would be huge if it contained routes to everything. So the way around that is to just put in a few local ones, and send everything else to a router to send it on its way. So the gateway is like a default place to send things not contained in the kernel routing table. I know, more that you ever wanted to know.

On the stats page:
In the Technician Readout
Is this the range of server addresses or client addresses?
It's the same as the "DHCP Address" from the stats page above.

Good. I was worried that the two options were mutually exclusive.
Still, it would be nice to know why I haven't gotten dhcp working yet.

Got 'em. What about the "search" line? My dial-up account has one, but I don't know why.

Thank, that makes sense. A lot of the networking tutorials suck and/or are out of date,
but the Linux Home Networking docs are nice.

No, I want to learn this stuff. Historically, I've focused on app-level programming more than system adminstration, but I'm getting so discouraged with the Java/C++ mentality in the industry these days, doing sysadmin work seems pleasant by comparison

You said that was Zenwalk? Have you opened xnetconf?
http://manual.zenwalk.org/en/ch04s04.html
It most likely will not give you an address untill you enter your username and password for yahoo dsl, otherwise anyone with a modem could get online.

Hacker-X,

I think you are almost there. I tried pinging the last two IP addresses, they are outside your system, on probably your ISP's machines. This is the strangest router I have seen for home use. It looks like the config is set to only give out one IP address. You can't ping that address since it hasn't been given out to a system.

Where did you come up with the last two IP addresses? I'm wondering if they are your DNS addresses? If yes, then your router is forwarding IP packetts to your ISP.

For DHCP to work, your system has to make the DHCP request. If you have it configured for a static address, it won't request one.

Some where you need a user ID and password. Can you find any instructions on how to get one, and where you put it?

Is there anything in the router that talks about 'Broadband' configuration? There may be an IP address in there; that would be assigned by your ISP, and would be the address all packets from your machine would be translated ( NAT ) to.

I'm not sure you have to have DHCP working to get connected. After all, if the box does NAT, then it wouldn't matter what IP your system used. If it not using NAT, then it probably does matter a lot.

Right, the modem says they're the nameservers.

I thought it might be the modem. What else is strange about it? I found a networking tutorial that said 192.168.1.254 is a standard address for gateways.

The "search" line in resolv.conf must be important. With "search sbcglobal.net" added to the two nameserver lines, the ISP's registration page was accessible.

Here's the latest snag:

• Firefox brings up the ISP's registration page.
• It has obscenely demanding terms of service (TOS).
• There's a vertical scroll bar for the TOS text widget, but no scroll bar at all for the page, even though the page is both too wide and too tall for the screen.
• I had to use the page-down button to get to the "Accept" button.
• I click "Accept".
• The Member ID page comes up.
• Top of form says this:
  <%@page language="java" errorPage="SystemError.jsp" %>
• I fill in my phone #, click Next.
• Doesn't work. The button doesn't change, and nothing happens.
• The modem's ACTIVITY light may have started blinking once every few seconds, but that's all.
• I'm using FF 1.5.0, and Java is enabled.

I'll check into the other issues you mentioned, but this seems to be the hot spot right now.
Edit: Do you think upgrading Firefox would help?

So can this be fixed somehow? Maybe by a newer version of firefox? Should att/yahoo be considered actively hostile to linux and/or non-IE browsers? Is there some reason they need to implement critical web pages in such a browser-dependent way?

No? Is it a lost cause? Is it beyond hope? Don't spare my feelings, just tell me so I can move on. Is there some obvious solution I'm too dumb to see? Is at&t just hostile to Linux, whether intentionally or not? Think of all those other noobies who might want a dsl someday and would have to use at&t. Should they try it, or would it be pointless?

It appears they have the thing set up to hand out only one IP address. Most router have the ability to hand out many IP's. For less than $100 you can get routers that support wilrless, and wired connections. They don't have the limitations or this thing. It looks to me as if AT&T only want one system attached. What about the rest of the users in your abode???

Have you talked to their technical support? Don't tell them it is linux you are trying to connect; unless you want to hear something like 'we don't support linux'...

Have you got Java installed on your system? It is not there by default on many distros.

I think the modem is programmable, so maybe the range can be changed.(?)

Don't forget the air quotes around "Technical Support" Yes, I did speak with a series of clueless airheads, with no useful outcome unless there really is a capacitor in the dsl end of the Y connector.

Zenwalk targets developers, so yes. It's standard edition 1.5.0. Also, if you ever want to watch the currency market in real time, there's a nice applet here. I use it occasionally, so I guess java's working okay.

I should correct what I said about the Next button not working on the registration page. The button does change color on mouse-over, and the gray area around the button gets bigger on left-click. It doesn't do anything else though. It doesn't change the page or fetch a new one.