When back in Georgia earlier this year, I helped a friend set up his earthlink dsl connection. It is important to note that the DSL modem used by earthlink is actually a router. It holds the public ip address and issues a 192.x.x.x address to your computer(s.) They use pppoe and the router cannot be altered to operate as a bridge. I believe that earthlink is only offering cable service here so far, so this point is currently moot.
On the subject of cable/dsl modems being routers: During the last few months, all of my dsl orders with Verizon have been set up on ATMs rather than Frames. Verizon has also begun issuing Westell 2200 modems with new orders whether you are your own ISP (our case) or if you are using someone else. The 2200 modem is different than the previous 2100 series because it too is a router. Out of the box is set up to work in a pppoe environment, it is set up to handle NAT, it has a web server (this is how it is configured), it can be a DHCP server, and it has a configurable firewall that creates logs. It is dangerous. It can configured to act only as a bridge, but this is not the default setting. Username = admin, password = password, or was it admin? --scott
