Eventually internet is up today: The problem was linked to the freebox ethernet port (it does not work at all).

Following free support advice (and after five phone calls costing me at least 50 €!), I decided to try the USB port - on an XP machine, as they don't have other drivers :-(

I first spent more than half an hour to reactivate the only dual-boot machine I have, and to remember my password ;-)
Then I installed the driver, and tried to connect: It worked! Hummm... Only two minutes in fact: I got quickly a message telling me that Windows was rebooting, what I did with no choice at all! The same message (and result) came again soon. I understood later that I was infected by the Blaster Worm. That one took only a few minutes to infect this Exccceeelllent operating system (I really like the word operating when this is Microsoft related).

It was a chance in fact: I just tried to reboot Linux, with the same USB connection. Surprise: No problem, no driver needed (the CDCEther module loaded without help and managed the connection), and of course no more virus/worm!

I am just waiting for a new freebox, so I can use the ethernet port, and my wireless airport station (Currently, the laptop linux box acts as firewall/NAT box, and the airport, which links my dual-processor as well as my wife's iBook is just a bridge).

By the way, it is a good occasion (and reason!) to erase my last end-of-century-system partition isn't it?