Hang related to Internet connection

[Elmer E. Dow]

Good news!

I switched from Gnome to KDE and the problem of hanging Internet apps
appears to be solved.   

I think Reuben was heading in the right direction. Another friend of
mine speculated the following:

"This isn't a bias against any desktop environment over another, but the
apps you mentioned having a problem with are all Gnome apps... whereas,
as you know, Konqueror is a KDE app.  Perhaps all of those Gnome apps
share use of an underlying library that doesn't like having only
127.0.0.1 for an address and assumes (or takes a long time to time out)
that you are on a LAN. Now that would certainly be a silly assumption...
as is my assumption... but it makes some sense."

Thanks for your input, gentlemen.

Elmer