After being online for nearly three hours & while I was listening to an audio stream, I brought up kmail to check my e-mail. While it was downloading the process abruptly stopped. The modem was still connected but there was no throughput at all --not to the RealPlayer or the e-mail client. The log only shows a failed echo request: Feb 2 15:41:58 linux pppd[3359]: Plugin passwordfd.so loaded. Feb 2 15:41:58 linux pppd[3359]: pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid 0 Feb 2 15:42:31 linux pppd[3359]: Serial connection established. Feb 2 15:42:31 linux pppd[3359]: Using interface ppp0 Feb 2 15:42:31 linux pppd[3359]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0 <SNIP> Feb 2 15:42:35 linux pppd[3359]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 3378), status = 0x0 Feb 2 18:38:32 linux pppd[3359]: No response to 4 echo-requests Feb 2 18:38:32 linux pppd[3359]: Serial link appears to be disconnected. Feb 2 18:38:35 linux pppd[3359]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 5033), status = 0x0 Feb 2 18:38:36 linux pppd[3359]: Connection terminated. Feb 2 18:38:36 linux pppd[3359]: Connect time 176.1 minutes. Kinernet showed that the connection was terminated, finally, but I finally had to use the off-switch on the modem, which was a first, because the lights were still blazing ...indicating I was still connected. Now, this problem will happen while SuSEconfig is in progress, and I am used to that. However, this particular problem has been happening, on occasion, and totally w/o warning. I'm stumped! ...CH