Internet connectivity is one of the important means of communication in todays life. So troubleshooting the problems in our own networks or reconfiguring it for the easiness is not to be praised as a "geekness". In my opinion you don't need to be a geek for setting an internet connection or recovering your machine from a network problem.

Before getting into more troubles just checkout wheather the physical network components (cables, NICs, and so on) are connected properly and working. If everything is right then proceed to the following steps