[Techtalk] I got Linux working with Comcast (my ISP)

[comcastuser at fastmail.fm]

I recently had some trouble getting my Linux box to work with Comcast
(my ISP), and since the web didn't give me any direct answers, I had to
figure it out for myself. So I thought I'd share the knowledge.

Comcast uses DHCP, which is a standard protocol which allows the client
machine (my computer) to ask the network what its configuration should
be. I should have been able to just plug in the ethernet cable and boot
the machine, since my Linux distro uses DHCP by default. But somehow
that didn't work.

I figured out that I was actually connected to the Internet, but my DNS
wasn't configured. That meant that I could contact a server by IP
address but not by name. Not a very good scenario.

At this point I might have tried to find my ISP's DNS server and
configure it manually. Or I might have connected through a router,
because some routers manage DHCP themselves. But instead I configured my
machine to use OpenDNS: the primary DNS is 208.67.222.222 and the
secondary DNS is 208.67.220.220.

The way you configure your DNS depends on your distro. Traditionally you
would edit /etc/resolv.conf, but in my distro that file is
auto-generated. Since I use Fedora (Red Hat), I ran
/usr/bin/system-config-network, which has a nice GUI. (I actually got it
from the menu bar at the top of the screen, but it's easier to identify
the command by name than in the menu.)
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  comcastuser at fastmail.fm

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