Diagnosing connection issue

[edwardp-jjFNsPSvq+iXDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org (edwardp-jjFNsPSvq+iXDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org)]

 What remains a mystery, is while SeaMonkey and Firefox "freeze" (or were unable to retrieve any web pages) under both OS' on this machine (AMD Athlon X2 64) during that time, I could not call up the modem and router status screens in the browsers using their IP addresses (no DNS used), yet both of them sent back immediate ping responses...

 
If the connection remained solid, then why would both browsers lock up temporarily?? It can't be DNS-related, due to the inability of getting the modem/router screens...


-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
To: discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org
Sent: Wed, Feb 16, 2011 9:28 am
Subject: Re: Diagnosing connection issue

On 02/15/2011 03:53 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote: 
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:55 AM,  <edwardp-jjFNsPSvq+iXDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org> wrote: 
>> This happens with both Linux and Windows, so it cannot be system 
>> software if two operating systems are involved. 
> To be fair, both systems could have something wrong with them.   Given 
> that the more straightforward causes are being eliminated more 
> atypical reason have to be 
> considered.   Trying a recent Linux LiveCD of some sort to check on 
> this possibility is one option. 
> 
> Some more ideas: 
> 
> 1. Maybe pings work because they are small packets.   Maybe something 
> is flaky in handling full size packets.  Try specifying packet sizes 
> to ping (ping -s). 
> 2. Check stats on your network card with "ifconfig" to look for 
> errored or dropped packets.  If your home router has a status page 
> with similar info check that as well. 
Ping uses a different IP protocol, ICMP. HTTP uses TCP which requires a 
bit more overhead to establish the connection. You can also detect the 
name lookup with ping if you have lookup issues. Yesterday I was 
researching an issue with a virtual machine, and it ended up as a typo 
in the DNS. A simple ping was the clue.