Thank you for not castigating me for rambling too much. Reading through his original post again., and again. He has a DSL ISP bridge piece of hard ware from the telephone wire out of the wall and then, he has a linksys combination router, firewall and 4 port switch. ?????

Do this. From a web browser Log into the linksys router. Check the settings in the router,Linksys, make sure the router has a good IP from the DSL ISP, and then PING at the router, or ping from the router, or go to the section in the router set up where it says to test internet connection and it has the ability to send a ping to an IP address.

The Link sys is either getting a good IP address or not.????? The Links sys has five ethernet ports on ii's back. LAN (4x) and one WAN. the WAN is connected to the DSL ISP bridge. Some people call it a modem or a router it is not. It is best to not use the wireless part first until the DSL ISP connection is set up and working. Do a hardwaired connection to the linksys.

I know that once you do it correctly one time you will see as I do how easy it is.

The linksys in question has a status page??????
Check it to see if the IP addres from the DSL ISP is good.????????????