Ok Howell. Obviously doing my own resolv.conf by hand means calling tds for their nameservers. as to the second option, configuring so my nameservers are pulled down, how do i do that? Actually, I didn't tell the programs to do anything; I installed dhcpcd, added the auto line to /etc/network/interfaces, and off I went. I don't think the debian system asked me any questions. Thanks. Cheryl