> My apologies.  I was assuming a single ISP connection for the gateway.

(No need to apologise) I find that people commonly assume only one ISP.
Dealing with multiple ISPs is very useful if you get the busy from one
of them, especially when there were 3 free ISPs in this country (before
the dot boom turned into dot bomb), or when they have different features
or prices.

> Based on your description of suse's implementation, there seems to be a
> lot of bridging between user and system level commands, which would be
> necessary for a multiple ISP situation.

Not really. The only interface is that to the smpppd. System setup
changes are mostly made by the net interface config scripts (like on
every distro). Here's some info about that interface (shortened):

> cinternet --help
SuSE's `cinternet' is a frontend for `smpppd' and enables you to
control your internet connections.
  -I, --interface-list         list available interfaces
  -i, --interface-name=NAME    select a interface
  -P, --provider-list          list available providers
  -p, --provider-name=NAME     select a provider
  -A, --start                  start connection
  -D, --dialin                 trigger dialin (only for demand)
  -H, --hangup                 trigger hangup (only for demand)
  -O, --stop                   stop connection
  -s, --status                 show status
  -c, --config                 show configuration
  -l, --log                    show log

The resmgr thing is geared towards using peripherals in a desktop
situation. I didn't dig into it too far so can't say precisely which
advantages it has (other than the ones I already mentioned).

All the packages are available from
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/8.2/suse/{i568,src}/ if you want to
have a look yourself.

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann                 is possibly list0570 with the domain in header
http://volker.dnsalias.net/             Please do not CC list postings to me.

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