If you have standard hardware, your network card will be autodetected, and the driver loaded. It will even have an IP address. Type "ifconfig -a" in order to see your hardware configuration. If you want to give a static IP address, just type "ifconfig eth0 192.168.10.1". Once your IP address is set, you should make sure the default route is configured properly. For example, if your computer has a network card (address 192.168.10.1) that is connected to a gateway (192.168.10.2) which shares its internet connection, you can type this: "route add default gw 192.168.10.2".