don't you dare stay out of the discussion!! It's a great place/way to learn. If we can't see what you don't understand, we can't teach you new stuff or show you how to track things down :) Traceroute or tracert rather, tracks the path your data packets use from the point of leaving your computer to the destination point. Ping's are also packets but instead of showing you the path, it shows you the length of time it takes to go from your computer to the desitination. Now, you mentioned you weren't able to ping your ISP (grin) This could be one of a few things: You had no connection :( Your ISP has ping packets "receive disabled" (icmp service and/or echo ports disabled) :( But, the most likely is that your connection was up but the ISP's web page was having problems at server level (this server is usually not the same one you connect too). So, clear as mud??