AOL Desktop software sometimes refuses to acknowledge the Internet exists and if all the usual one click fixes offered by the company have failed to tame it, an old-fashioned solution can take care of those woes so the software doesn't have to be connected through Ethernet! Access your wireless modem/router and look for port forwarding. Regardless of the manufacturer and modem model, they should all have them. In the port forward dialogue, in the starting field enter 5190 and in the ending field enter 5190. That should allow the application to access the Internet. Save and close the port forwarding dialogue. Now open up your AOL Desktop software. Click the connect button. Then click the broadband tab. Now change the radio button from automatic configuration to manual configuration. Put a check in the box that says connect to tcp/ip if udp is not available. Save and close connect dialogue. Now AOL should connect to the Internet via the port forwarding you have just set up on your modem! It was a learning experience to discover that Internet software may have to be manually configured to force a connection when nothing else works to get on the Internet. This solution is offered to help others who have a similar situation since all too often the ISP has NO idea what is wrong and the error codes don't tell the techs much - not why the application doesn't connect when you know you have a good Internet connection! It takes trial and error to find the right solution. Disconnects have an answer but its not always the readily obvious one. Again, I hope this helps with these kinds of cases and googling the web doesn't always offer an answer that's useful to someone who needs their software to work!
You should not need to "connect to the internet" on a broadband. It should always be connected and ready to use. I also do not see how port forwarding comes into play for getting internet connection from your ISP? The DSL modem should always be connected and just needs a username and a password for authentication. Furthermore, the connection should be through the modem's WAN port, so it should not need port forwarding. Port forwarding is only needed for the LAN ports.
I agree its usually not needed. When the software ignores the existence of a live Internet connection and fixing it doesn't work, you may have to force it to complete the connection. So far its worked!
