The two utilities that come to mind are ifconfig and route. ifconfig should list the network interfaces including any ppp interfaces that you may have to an ISP. The real thing that I would look into is the route command and specifically the default route. If you have two ISP connections but do not run a routing program then the routing will be handled by static tables (shown w/ route -- use -n to avoid DNS lookups) and the key is the default route. I'm just guessing here but I would bet that the route to one ISP has just that ISP's addresses in the table but the second ISP has a default route that sends everything without an explicit route through it. It is the second one that went down and the first one has a limited routing entry only for itself thereby preventing you from sending anything through it. Assuming that the first ISP is going to stay down then just set the default route to point through the second one. If your ppp scripts have 'set default route' enabled then the last one executed is the one that counts; make sure that the ISP that is still up is the last connection made.
An alternative is to use a routing program like routed. -- boater/Whitewater Paddler -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
