[jsnap]

Turns out when I lost phone service, what really happened was I lost my cable internet. It happened when I was gone for a few hours, only my kids didn't tell me this. They rebooted the computer but not the Cisco ATA telephone adapter (which they know nothing about). Today, I finally got someone at Vonage (the VoIP provider) who understood using a switch as opposed to a router. What I needed to do was to reboot the Cisco phone adapter first so it gets an IP address from the cable company before they see the computer.

As for using a router, this will solve my issue more readily and allow me to share the internet with my daughter's iBook. Now all I need is the right router and a printer that will support a wireless printer server.