cannot browse after dial-up conn completes

[k_crew]

after some false starts I finally can get connected to the internet via external modem using
some scripts to fire up pppd on demand. Tailing /var/log/messages during the connection looks fine BUT Firefox can't find anything and I can't ping anywhere after connected.
Being fairly new to linux, I don't know where to go from here.
Any help is appreciated.

[fifty63]

what do the following give you after the ppp0 is up and running?
ifconfig ppp0
netstat -rn
cat /etc/resolv.conf

Also do you have any iptables rules running? if so does /var/log/messages show any rejects or denys after ppp0 is up? 'iptables -L' should show you your current tables. 'service iptables stop' will clear them to default accept.