Silvan wrote in
:

snip

I don't understand the inner workings of the process or I never would
have spent four hours screwing with reinstalling Windows (because I
had to feed it all those stupid driver CDs to get it running well
enough to run the setup program) just to do this.


The best thing to do is ignore their process. Their process is designed to
automate the installation in a standard manner.

When you are using anything that isn't a plain-vanilla setup, you are far
better off to put something in the middle to talk to their network. In my
case, it has always been a not terribly expensive router. Our first one
was a FreeBSD box that one of the kids put together from leftover parts, a
1-floppy type super low end box that did simple routing and address
translation. The current box is a less than $150 firewall/router, from
SMC, with features that were $50k when I got my first dialup account.

Today's routers handle all of the network config dynamically. There's very
little reason for you to have to run their software on your desktop. And
their software is almost never current.

My cynical experience says that you do NOT want the provider to label you
as 'one of those LINUX guys'.

Patriarch,
who knows more about the business side of this stuff than is good for the
soul...