I've recently installed the Sarge version of Debian Linux and have run into a problem with it's networking abilities.

I access the internet by cable modem, connected to a linksys broadband router. The router is set up to allow full access to this computer.

When I run dhclient from Debian, it can't even locate the router to be assigned an IP on the network. I get "network not acessable" when I try to ping my router, or any IP for that matter.

I have run different Linux distributions in the past (the "user friendly" beginner level distributions) but this is my first experience with Debian.

To me, it almost seems as if my network card (integrated into the mboard) is not configured properly, although that is only speculation as I really have no idea what is infact going on. The i386 architectures of the other distributions that I have run have all automatically detected and configured my NIC with no problems, and their DHCP clients easily detected a DHCP server.

After hunting, experimenting by trial and error, and running around with a headache for a couple days, I decided I'd see if the community knew anything about this problem. Is there anyone who can offer some advice on the matter?

Many thanks