Set up the network, Xp pro on both machines through a hub, running dsl everything works fine. File sharing is quick and after several tweaks to the second computer, I got it rocking. (1280/220 on both machines). Now here is the strange thing. For some reason it will not open certain site, no way no how. (Ebay, USPS.com are a couple), but it opens other sites great. What gives. I have reset everything in options back to default, done a tweak test and everything is great. It just will not open certain sites. They open fine on the other computer. Any help would be great. AG

check XPs builtin firewall software or any firewall software you have installed. Only reason why some would work and others wouldn't.

uhhh... isnt DNS where the www.ebay.com turns into a binar address? well that could be it. maybe check your DNS settings.

Check the encyrption level in IE.

FBI Agent is RIGHT! I use Charter Pipeline here in Rockwall, TX. I have over 20 years networking, server and PC experience. From August 13th through the 18th (5 full days) I was unable to access most web sites embedded html pages. It was by far the strangest thing I had ever seen. eBay home page ok and UPS.com home page ok. My bank site, PAypal, FedEx, DSL Reports, etc home pages ok. But not any html pages within these sites.....login pages, account pages, searches, etc... I spent several hours trying to debug my LAN before I called Charter Cable. They told me that they had a mojor DNS change/update in progress and not one single person could tell me when it would be fixed. Boy! No alerts, no notices or nothing from Charter! "Yea, we are down. So what?" At the time the DNS explaination made sense but it does not satisfy some results I got during testing - ping of IP addy's failed, some ok, others timed out. Then in 10 minutes, those time outs would ping back ok. And also their mail.server was down, then up, then down. Pings to their DNS servers always replied - BUT - Tracert showed several large latency hops going through some of the routers out there. During this time, several projects for customers were delayed. And 5 business accounts I maintain locally called me for 911 support on their systems. Some thought they had the new Blaster worm infecting their systems. None of them had the worm - I set up my customers LANS with titanium fire walls.....dual routers with double NAT, SPI, etc. and everybody gets all updates to Norton and M$ every week. Not only were my customers pissed off, but I could not do any of my eBay transactions, my own bank transfers were late resulting in over drafts, etc. etc. Needless to say, I and some business accounts throughout this area are committed to finding an alternate DSL ISP that is RELIABLE so we can drop Charter Pipeline. But perhaps this is not the answer....maybe other action is required but that is between them and their lawyers. I still have some questions about Charter service (lack-of) that some of you might be able to help with, although the techs said they had a DNS change in progress, how does that explain the down times on their mail.charter.net servers? Did they get hit by the blaster worm? Boy! - please tell me they have better safety/security practices than those I use! Or maybe They are afraid to admit that they have sloppy sys admin practices that allowed the infection to their servers? This would be very scary as these same systems store personal info, passwords, credit cards, etc. Perhaps they are too stupid to know what the real trouble was - I have heard that some DSL customers had similar troubles. So, if that is the case, then maybe the real trouble was backbone routers that got toasted on some DOS attacks? I can't confirm anyone that was using DSL (not Charter.net) with this same set of weird issues so please pass this on to anyone who may have had this same trouble as I would like to know if it was an issue with the 'net or Charter's fault. Please feel free to commit here in this forum or email me direct dallasguy8@NOSPAM.yahoo.com (remove the nospam) - what do some of you other techs think? Thanks for any thoughts you might have on this! -Steven