I have installed Mandriva LE2005 recently - the installation was smooth and Mandriva looks great.

I am using an external dial-up modem to connect to the Internet.
I have been able to connect to the Internet using kppp.
The kppp panel shows that I am connected and so do the lights on the external modem -

but I am not able to use any Internet related applications like the browser, messengers, etc.

What do I need to tweak to make this work?
Thank you in advance!

these application don't seem to recognize that the computer is connected to the net.

I did some digging and found this on the reported Madriva problems on their official web-site:

Network unreachable because of wrong firewall settings

* A firewall is automatically installed using eth0 instead of your interface to internet. To get back your internet access in the meantine, you can
o either use MCC / Security / Firewall then OK and change the network interface to ppp+
o or you can disable temporarily the firewall with this command after boot : "service shorewall stop"
o or for advanced users edit /etc/shorewall/interfaces and replace the line "net eth0 detect" with "net ppp+ detect" then service shorewall restart.
* this is necessary for all users connecting with a modem (analogic or DSL with pppoa or pppoe) or users connecting with another interface than eth0

A fix will be available in drakxtools updates. Once you've installed the updates, you have to reconfigure your firewall with the firewall tool from the Mandriva Linux Control Center (drakfirewall).

Lemme try this and find out if it works.

PROBABLY I WILL TRY THIS LAST RESORT.

Apart from firewall issues, two things should normally happen when a ppp or pppoe connection is established:
/etc/resolv.conf should be populated automatically with the ip addresses of your ISP's nameservers
/sbin/route should show a default route has been added via your ppp interface

Sometimes, due to a broken script or incorrect user configuration, either or both of these do not happen. If you appear to be connected but can't browse, It is always worth checking the contents of /etc/resolv.conf (a text file you can open with your favourite editor) and looking at the output of /sbin/route (run that at a command prompt eg. Konsole). If you're not sure what you're looking at, copy the information here and someone will tell you if it is correctly set up or not.

look at here

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...36#post1839436