I have always accessed my Earthlink DSL ISP via a WinPoET dialer. Now I’m trying to network my brother (via an Airlink101 AR315W router) to the same Earthlink connection. And, when posed my geek friend, and the Earthlink people with the question, “what if my brother want’s to go online when I’m not?” they said: “you don’t need a dialer with DSL.” What’s with that? WTF was I ever using this? Perhaps I needed it with Win95, but no longer do with 98SE/XP?

Update: This is a bit of a “rock my world” epiphany. I’ve been using this PPPoE dialer for the past four years, and now I find I never needed it?

Update: After shutting down all my browser windows, IMs and email client, I “disconnected”. Then, nothing would work. So, now the Earthlink people tell me I must have a PPPoE dialer with Win98SE. It seems I don’t with XP, which the other machine runs on. But that’s in the other room, turned off, and not even hooked up yet, other than dial-up.

Oh, a task for another day. 🙂