Possibly your ISP is not reliable, but mine has been consistent
and dependable for over 4 years, which is why I am still with him.

I have solved my problem, and it WAS internal.

I uninstalled MSIE 5, rebooted, ran the registry cleaner and Scandisk,
and then reinstalled MSIE 5.

Now traceroutes are back to a normal time.

> > > TraceRoute Statistics for www.mci.com
> > > 15 packets transmitted, 15 packets received, 0% packet loss
> > > round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 128/146/161

Thanks to all who offered suggestions!

Especially Jim McKnew, who _almost_ won the award for
"pest of the week" <GRIN> with all his off-list questions
and creative suggestions.  It was his comments that made
me go back and start over fresh.

Once I got rid of the "tunnel vision" and RE-examined the
original problem (IE kept timing out on web sites)
I realized the problem had nothing to do with packet sizes
or MTUs.... it was IE all along.

Jim Meagher
=====
Micro Solutions Consulting        Member of The HTML Writers Guild
http://www.ezy.net/~microsol     International Webmasters Association
410-543-8996                MS Site Builder Network - Level 2 member
=====
----- Original Message -----
From: Sean Oelkers <[log in to unmask]>

> Hiya Jim!
>
> I'd guess that it's an ISP issue rather than a HW/SW one, just because
it's
> pretty standard for an ISPs feed to go weird every now and then
>

                         PCSOFT's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>