i just hooked up my computer (running fedora-core 2)to my dsl modem and have come up ageinst a bit of a problem
i first tried pinging several webpages and that worked fine but when i opened mozilla and tried to go to google it took about 10 minutes for the browser to say the server timed-out?
i then tried yahoo.com and redhat.com and they both worked but it took about five minutes to load each. needless to say my normal internet connection is much much faster then that. i tried other browsers on my machine with the same result. also i tried it agein and it worked properly for the first few webpages i tried and then it stopped working agein. Any thoughts please?

sounds like you have an issue resolving the servers (DNS)
first, how did you set up your dsl ?
and go into a browser and type 216.239.39.99 in the url instead of google.com and see how much faster it loads. if the difference is significant, its likely your dns

I am having the same issue, just on a smaller scale.

When I enter a hostname into the address bar, or try to ping it from commandline, it takes a while for it to respond; maybe 15secs-1 minute. When I use the IP address, however, It is much faster, around 1/2 second (For google). This convinces me that I am having an issue converting hostnames into IPs.

Is there a way to configure it so that it will be faster? If so, can someone please instruct me?

You can try to use different nameservers. My PCs get their nameservers via DHCP, but you can specify them locally in /etc/resolv.conf with lines such as "nameserver 207.69.188.196" (that's an Earthlink nameserver, by the way). Or, on Fedora Core 3, you can use the command system-config-network -- click on the DNS tab. I would think that command still works in Fedora 4.

You can find additional nameservers using the nslookup utility. Here's an example where I searched for nameservers with domain name "earthlink.com":
Find the IP address of the nameserver by pinging it:

i tried the ip of google with the same result
my dsl modem was set up through a PC using the software that came with it
i tried the internet agein and it looks like its the dns because it says (on the bottom of the browser) "Resolving host hostname "and then it just keeps doing that until i loose patients.
my connection runs through an onboared motherboared ethenet port

And have you had this Internet connection up and running properly in Fedora Core 3 previously? Or has this always been the case with using Fedora Core 4?

Have you ever run any other operating systems/distributions on this machine with the same DSL connection? Have you tried booting to a live CD (say, Knoppix) and seeing if the connection responds similarly there? I would think this has to be a DNS issue, but if you're getting the same lag with straight IPs, then maybe not.

Another thing...when you ping the IP, it comes back quickly, no?

i run fedora core 2 and have never had internet running on this particular machine (its new)
i went to the internet configuration wizard and looked at the DNS set up
the primary DNS was set up to the same ip of the other machine on the network (pobobly not good) so i typed in the ip of that other computer into the browser and looked at my modem set up. i then typed the primary dns ip and secondary into the configuration wizard restarted the computer and got the same result; am i at least on the right track

You might be on the right track. One thing you can do is get in touch with your Internet service provider (either online or through a phone call) and find out from them what DNS servers you should be using. They will likely only support Windows, but you should be able to get the DNS information regardless, just don't tell them you're running Linux if you think that's going to be an issue.

But, you can ping outside IPs, right? And reach outside websites? It just takes a really long time, if I understand what you're saying.

Problem with ur ISP gateway or the DNS servers, i had this problem many times before and always it was the ISP, but i might be wrong

nope; cant ping outside pages anymore; and never got to any of them anyway the operation kept timing out and i dont know what that means

Try talking to your ISP and make sure you have all the settings you need.