Re the reasons I might have timed out trying to run tracert on my ISP: Well, I know I was connected, since I was also wandering around Rosity during that time. (And the connection icon on my systray was active, and IE always tells me when I've been disconnected, anyway.) Unless you're saying that tracert wasn't connected? I thought you said I wasn't pinging, so why would it matter about the ping packets being "receive disabled"? I'll try again another time. My ISP almost ALWAYS seem to have trouble. Sigh. Hmmmm. Could my firewall have created a problem here? Yep, I actually understood, in theory anyway, what you said. Thanks for the info. (Do I really want to know all this stuff? LOL!)