real success
 

Thanks for your help, I finally got it to work - although I do not grok all of the commands I used. I think I have accomplished the necessary tasks. basically, my machine is now on the net. After I configured eth0 properly using the network scripts (still not sure who made these). I had to change the netmask to a number where a.b where the same but c and d were different. in other words, i was assigned an ip address that was different from the gateway by the last and the second-to-last number.

question, though it seems to work I never entered the DNS server anywhere (I don't think). Was it automatically picked up?

I am not sure what a proxy server is although I have heard the term. I will look up a definition. I am just amazed that I see google on my linux box and I did it myself (with help).:D

linuxconf don't think so. I typed it and nothing happened unless there is a permissions thing on the executable file. Or a directory issue. I did see other people using it once, though. Maybe it was mandrake or another flavor.