I'm running PE 5.0.3 and I'm having some trouble getting my internet-connection to work. I'm connecting to the internet via a LAN-connection. I've set up my NIC in BeOS for usage of DHCP but I can't seem to connect to the internet(or the local net either). My NIC is a noname RealTek 8139 Fast Ethernet card and it is detected correctly under network properties and everything looks just fine, it says "ready". But one strange thing in the network properties caught my eye, the IP for my NIC was shown as being 0.0.0.0. I thougt for myself that this can't be correct so I fired up the terminal and ran netstat. Netstat shows the same result, IP 0.0.0.0 and something else about 127.0.0.1. I've tried reinstalling the BeOS drivers for 8139 a couple of times but no success, I've also tried moving the NIC to other PCI-slots but that did'nt help either.

Please does anyone know how to fix this?

Some have suggested that the DHCP for beos doesn't work with some servers. I have not found that yet. Maybe you could assign yourself a 192.168.x.x IP and then try. Your local intranet should assign you an IP if you use DHCP. I assume you are in an office enviroment.
First you need to be able to ping yourself. 127.0.0.1.
Then you need to be able to ping something else.
Find out how your system sets it's proxy and point your browsers settings to that proxy. You /admin might have to set up a port on a firewall/server to access the net.
IF worse comes to worse you might be able to put a proxy program on a windows machine and then point your BeOS machine to it if it has a spare nic or you know it's IP address.

Thanks for the help but unfortunately that doesn't seem to help me :(

Just to explain a few issues:
I'm running in a non-server environment with no active firewalls or proxies so there should be no problem with ports or proxies.

I tested with an old NE2000-compatible ISA-card buth with the same result...
Therefore I'm beginning to believe that it perhaps isn't my NIC which is not working but simply something in the configuration but that is not my area of expertise.

No proxy or server? Are you on the www backbone? I must not understand how you can connect at all. Do you have an ISP or do you own a primary IP address?