Quote Originally Posted by calathar
Okay. I'm on a cable connection going through a switch, not a router. No routing on it. I ran netcardconfig and it seemed to configure eth1 just fine all by itself when I said that it could use DHCP, but I still can't connect. Does that help?
That you have a switch and no router is a bit non-standard. It might be helpful to explain what you are trying to do with the switch. Is there any DHCP server connected to the switch? If you have cable but no router you generally get assigned an IP address by DHCP from the cable company. This sets your IP address to a routable IP address on the cable company network and eventually to the Internet. Generally most cable companies will not let a user have more than one routable address on the connection, so what else is connected to the switch and what IP addresses (and net masks) are assigned to each computer on the network?

I would suggest that you get an router (often $10 or less after rebate). That way you can build a local network with local addresses and all of your systems can share the network connection through NAT. The hardware firewall provided by a router will also help protect the local systems, particularly if any run Windows. If you have more systems than will plug directly into the router then you can still make use of the switch.

I'm assuming that since you have a switch that you have other computers in a local network. If any are providing DHCP services this could cause conflicts. If you are configured so the systems can communicate with each other you might have IP address problems getting to the cable company. Do you know what settings to expect when you get a normal DHCP configuration from the cable company? What is the output from the ifconfig command after letting eth1 configure itself by DHC P (netcardconfig)? Have you tried just plugging the computer directly into the cable modem and bypassing the switch?