Baffled by a Cable Modem

[dnvot at yahoo.com]

I have been using Verizon DSL as my Internet connection for several years with no problems. I decided to upgrade my connection from .768 to 3 megs. after about three weeks multiple phone calls , two different modems, technician visit, line work and hours on the phone, I am now down to .6 MB/sec. and the technician can't come again for another week. I will be just short of a month getting an upgrade.
 I therfore decided to try Cox Cable high speed internet. I signed up , installed the modem and went through the activation process in Windows XP.all right. When I try Linux/Firefox, I get a situation that is completly baffling to me. Most of the URLs I try result in firefox hanging at "loading" However Gmail works fine. I tried Cox support and they are very good at confirming that my hardware in windows is good, but they don't speak Linux.. I tried to look at the configuration values but couldn't see anything suspicious. If a config value is wrong I would expect that i wouldn't get Gmail.
 Can anyone give me a clew on where to start? I tried google, but couldn't see anything
 helpful. I did see one message that said the modem I have is "not compatible with Linux." although most of the talk was about a USB connection and I have ethernet. the modem is a Scientific Atlanta 2100.
This may be off topic and I would apreciate redirection to a better group. I looked but didn't see one.
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