Yes, what you say is true as far as it goes; dsl is done by ethernet with an ethernet modem. However, you have to have software to make this work; for windows users, this software comes with the installation kit, but for linux users it means installing packages. In this case, it was pppoe (roaring penguin version). Aparently, pppoe works in combination with pppd for linking; if all went well, this would happen at boot and there would be no problem. However, in this case, all did not go well and I don't know why. I am sure lots of people have good experiences with ameritech; I was only relating my experience so people could be warned that they might have a problem. Cheryl