Earthlink DSL failing to see Ubuntu

[Dan Martin]

> The DSL modem (checked the back of the box finally) is 
> connected to my NIC with Ethernet cable, no router, hardwired.
> 
> See my follow-up post for additional strangenesses!
> And thank you all for putting up with my under-informed problem.

Try "ifconfig" from the command line, and you should see your network
interfaces.  "eth0" is probably the interface you are interested in.  I
would still suggest using the Networking application in the administration
section of Ubuntu's Gnome desktop.  

Or if you would rather do it from the command line (and you really know what
you are doing), you can manually edit "/etc/networking/interfaces".  Then
you can try "sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart".