Sorry for the delay in answering, I eventually removed Salix as it couldnt seem to keep the connection alive.
Im in the US, Alabama, OTELCO.net is my ISP, which is a small town phone company. Ive never totally understood how this service works. I just know, three years ago when I got it installed, the tech punched in some IP #s in my Windows 2000Pro, and it connected right away. Ive only had to do that one or two times since then, normally when I boot the windows partition, it picks the connection right away. I dont have to enter a username/password, and Ive reinstalled Windows 2-3times since then. Ive been using SlamD64-12 since it came out, never had to do any of that to get it connected to dsl, I just set the netconfig to dhcp, and it connects, and I run the SlamD linux for weeks at a time without rebooting windows. I just thought maybe the linux distroš were picking up the lease that was established and kept it alive. Really I dont know the details of dhcp, but I have copied the IP info from my working linux install, and entered those #s into the Static IP config section of other linuxes, and sometimes they work, sometimes not. It is frustrating. I'ļl probably reinstall Salix and try again, since it worked great for about 48hrs, perhaps I'ļl figure out what is the trouble. Oh, for what it'š worth, my dsl modem is a Speedstream 4200 , I have the box, and it DOES say "PPoE Modem Router". It'š connected to computer with rj45-ethernet cable, but also can use usb cable connection. Maybe I will try the USB cable and see what happens ( I Have disk with usb drivers for windows, unk if linux has drivers too?)
Thanks for going thru this mystery.