Might be there is a router that is flaky. I've had massive problems today getting to US sites from the UK, had complete packetloss on more than one occasion. I'm thinking it's a router somewhere that is either being DOS attacked atm, or it's just deaded or semi deaded. It's not DNS, I've tried a whole bunch of DNS's, including my own which usually work fine. And my own DNS servers are in the US... so it's between here and the US. Hopefully it's sorted out soon. :/

Silke