I have a compaq lappie running gentoo and I cannot connect to the internet. I am in IRAQ right now and they offer overpriced slow internet via "US Coms". The issue is that US Coms requires you to log in to there portal to access the net instead of billing by trailer pods. Most other people here running windows, and they auto detect several network connections that are
"local only" until they login, and when they open a browser they are automatically redirected to the portal. Gentoo loads my NIC properly and the "ifconfig" output seems normal but, I can't ping anything, including the login portal's URL. I can't manually navigate to the portal either. I have looked at other people's firefox and net configs on windows and i don't see anything as far as a proxy, maybe its some kind of transparent proxy. Any Ideas?

What is your usual method for connecting to wireless networks?

If you are using a program like nm-applet, or wicd, they should be able to detect the networks. However, if you are using the command-line, you can scan for networks with: [code]$ /sbin/iwlist <wireless-interface> scan | less[code] and once you find a network you want to join, use iwconfig:

Its not wirless. ( My lappie has a push button switch to turn my wifi card on that i could never quite get linux to recognize, but used nidswrapper successfully, lol if only there was a switch driver....) But its a hard wire connection that is run through the pods, my friends can connect in my pod but i can't ;[ btw my eth0 output is:

link encap:Ethernet HW addr 00:1b:38:ee:68:9e
inet addr:172.30.59.187 Bcast:172.30.59.187 Mask:255.255.255.255
inet6 addr:fe80::21b:38ff:feee:689e/64 scope link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU 1500 Metric 1
RX packets 25 errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0
collisions 0 txqueuelen 1000
interupt 16 base addr: 0x1000

...so how are you attempting to connect, Ethernet or wireless?

ethernet.