I am running red hat 6.1 (cartman)
as a server and i just installed a nic card.
When i booted up the server saw the nic and installed it.
Great!
then i used a win2K computer and telneted into my
Linux server and monitored it from the server.
Awsome!
i then used the command 'ifconfg'
and the result where
eth0 and the ethernet info
lo and the local info.

Ok... so i was messing around and got stuck so i rebooted the
server and now when it reboots it only logs in local all the ethernet info is gone.

what did i do wrong???

Not sure, lost the settings somehow. Run netconfig to reconfigure your network.

Ok, so whats the dfference between runlevels? My understanding is that there is a differnece between logging in as a single user mode and a network mode? maybe?

Runlevels start different services at boot time.

Like single user mode just loads the necessary services to get to a command prompt, it won't load such services like NFS, Apache.. etc.
Multiuser mode with Networking would load these services.
Graphical would load all those services plus boot into X as well.

Try doing a search on runlevels or init for linux.. for more information.