Media-One Express, IP Masquerading

[jc at chambers.tiac.net (John Chambers)]

We've decided that we should give Mediaone a try here  at  home,  and
I'm  looking for the best current info on how to set it up for a site
with one linux machine and one W95  (involuntarily  half-upgraded  to
W98 ;-) machine, each with an Ethernet card.

One problem: Last night, I asked AltaVista where I could find "+howto
+linux +windows-95". It gave me a long list of URLs, and every single
one of them got a "not found" reply.  Anyone know a good archive that
can actually deliver this HOWTO?

We've also been having a bit of fun on our third try to get  the  W95
system  to  use  its Ethernet card.  For various reasons, it seems to
have both  IE  and  Netscape  installed,  and  both  of  them  report
"unexpected  error"  in  trying  to contact the linux machine.  There
seems to be no clue as to what the error might be, but I have a  good
idea:   I've been noticing that nowhere in any of the install windows
have I ever seen any place where I can type in the W95  machine's  IP
address.   One  of  the  things that I (think I) installed was called
"Mstcp.ddl", and it asked me to reboot the machine  before  it  would
work, but never did it mention anything so mundane as an IP address.

Anyhow, if anyone knows of a good HOWTO on configuring the  W95  side
so  that  it actually talks IP and can connect via TCP to things like
the telnet and http port, I might find it interesting reading.   (I'm
also wondering whether this might be a good opportunity to finish the
upgrade to W98 that several other packages have attempted without any
advance warning.  Maybe it's a good excuse to upgrade linux, too. ;-)

There's also the general question of  how  do  I  tell  the  Mediaone
people  I  want  the cable modem installed.  Presumably when they see
there's a W95 system here, they'll insist that they can only  install
their  stuff there, but I'd like it to talk via the linux machine, of
course.  We'd rather not have to pay for two cable  modems,  one  for
each  machine,  though  I get the impression that's what the mediaone
folks would really like to sell us.

Is  there  a  good  email  address at mediaone.com that I should know
about?  Or maybe a web page with a checklist.

(I did check out http://www.mediaone.com/, and none  of  the  various
browsers I have here could make the least bit of sense of the page. I
examined it with a little http debug tool that I've been writing, and
it showed me the headers and data that was sent.  It's about the most
demented bit of non-html that I think I've seen so far.  A javascript
routine  with an embedded applet that generates a few <IMG> tags, but
no <A>, <MAP>, or <FORM> tags anywhere to be seen.  Strange.  Does it
produce something sensible for anyone?)