Cannot get ethernet off the ground

[William Gordon Rutherdale]

Hi.

I have just installed FreeBSD on a machine and am having trouble getting 
basic ethernet connectivity working.

I know that the interface works because it functioned fine with the old 
virus software called 'Vista' on that connection.

The ifconfig utility tells me that the machine recognises something 
called fwe0 with an ethernet address of 02:1e:8c:9a:3b:96.  However 
dmesg tells me this is a 'Fake Ethernet' address.

I used ifconfig (as root) to set the ip address and netmask for fwe0, 
but am unable to ping another machine on the network.  I have not tried 
installing FreeBSD before but have installed other operating systems in 
the past including various versions of Linux.

Is it possible that FreeBSD is not recognising the ethernet device 
properly at boot time, and giving it the wrong driver?  Or is there a 
simpler step I missed?

What steps can I take to get this interface working?

-Will