This is odd - I have both a notebook with 32-bit Ubuntu 9.10 and a desktop with 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10 with the same problem that cropped up just yesterday. I use ethernet connections to a router off a DSL gateway. Opera and Transmission both seem to work fine. Firefox and the Update Manager and Synaptic can't make a connection to the Internet server though. This is very odd behavior for these PCs.

Just out of interest, are they connected correctly? Can you post output of just for interest. It's the first thing I would look at.

Take a look at the proxy settings
@irishbitte

Cheers repo, think I'm half awake between food and drink over Christmas!

Hello,

I think you have to uninstall the Firefox and clean registry and restart the computer.

and try once again install the Firefox.

Hope you will fix that problem.

Thanks

___________________

Could you explain how to clean registry in linux?
Why restart the computer?

Hello and thanks for giving a go to help. My problem began Christmas day and I had to wait 'til Mon to contact my ISP and see if he could help. He's stumped as to why Opera and Transmission worked, but he walked me through the networking to get things working. As he explained it, the trouble I was having should be a thing of the past when Ubuntu 10 gets out. For now I've had to adjust each of the 3 computers in the house on the ethernet router to a static address. I'm naive as they come re networking, so I'm not one to lecture on what I had to do. But why Opera could get around the bug would be interesting to know, if someone who knows why can explain in fairly ordinary language.

Registry? I know something of the Windows registry. It's a big reason I abandoned using Windows - the registry was constantly getting corrupted. I'd understood Linux has no such animal. Hence no need to edit the registry in Linux.