Baffled by a Cable Modem

[Tom Killian]

> Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:50:01 -0700 (PDT)
> From: dnvot at yahoo.com
...
> 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

Check the MTU.  The default is 1500 bytes, but some providers use a
smaller value (e.g., on a DSL connection running PPPoE, the MTU is
1492 bytes).  If the interface MTU is set to a value smaller than 1500
(left over from a DSL configuration?), packets from the cable modem
are probably being lost.