Checking internet connection without a winbox

[Robert]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 26/09/06, Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 18:32:04 +0800,
>>
>> I would suggest staying away from combined routers and modems.
>> I would prefer to not have the ISP have control over routing on my local
>> network. With your own router, you can filter traffic going to the modem
>> so that you don't leak stuff that you don't want to.
>> This also makes testing easier in the case where there are problems as 
>> you
>> can pull the router and test the modem without any acls getting in the 
>> way.
>> This can make diagnosing whose equipment is at fault simpler.
>>
> 
> 
> That is exactly what I'm trying to do! I suspect that my router is
> faulty, and I want to diagnos it. That is why I must eliminate the
> router and connect just by using the modem. How on earth can I do that
> on Fedora? Where do I enter my ISP username and password? The ISP only
> provids instructions on how to do that in Windows.
> 
> Dotan Cohen
> http://what-is-what.com
> 

I went through that exercise, a year or so ago, and found a LIVE CD to 
be very handy.  While setting up the PPPoE connection is really a 
trivial matter, it's comforting (to me, at least) to know that any 
changes I've made to a working system as well as any bad stuff that 
might come into an exposed system will all be gone when I reboot.
(The problem wasn't my router, BTW...)