>Virtually all PINGs I do timeout now, when I know for sure the sites are up & running just fine. At first I thought my workplace firewall was blocking PINGs, but I can't PING much of anything from my home ISP, either, same problem. It used to be an occasional nice IP troubleshooting command, but not any more.
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>Is everyone blocking PINGs on one side or the other now? Maybe it has to do with the DoS attacks & increased security. Any one familiar with this?

Have you tried to do a tracert? This will show the path to the particular .com. It might give you some ideal of where the problem is.