My old @Home setup worked for me, but I realized I was
using @Home's DNS service and didn't want to keep
relying on that.

When I followed some advice in this list, and a little
explanation I found out on the Web, I came up immediately
with DHCP.  Later, my connection went bad, so I did
this:
   /usr/sbin/ifdown eth0
   /usr/sbin/ifup eth0

... and I was back.  Incidentally, under Windows I
call WINIPCFG.EXE and do a release/renew for the same
reason.

Obviously this nonsense is not acceptable if you want
to maintain a service for remote access, but I expect
some of Cox's issues will smooth out after another week
or two.

Vic