Can't access router config pages, hotmail, bank site, or many other websites.

Try to disable IPv6:
Open firefox and enter the URL about:config
Then search for ipv6 that should display one result. No right click on that entry and select Toggle.

Done as you requested, no change. (Restarted after making the change even). Same situation, firefox displays "Transfering Data from login.live.com" in the status bar indefinatly when I browse to www.hotmail.com.

more examples of things that will not work (if these examples help at all)

I'm typing in quotes what I see in the browser status bar. The program does not crash, it just will not display the requested page, regardless of refreshing/waiting.

*.guildportal.com - None of these work, "transfering data from..."
http://secure.ncix.com/cart/ - "Read secure.ncix.com"

Please tell, do you have any error doing regular Ubuntu upgrades...?

Please open a Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get autoremove

Please give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Thank you

I have reinstalled twice now, and both times did all of the regular Ubuntu upgrades without issue (All 113 or whatever of them, which required a restart once installed). I came back from the weekend yesterday, and there were a couple more upgrades ready to go as well, which installed without any issue. The only program/update that will not work, is the Macromedia Flash player, which seems to crap out when it goes to connect to the macromedia ftp to download some files.
"
Setting up flashplugin-nonfree (9.0.124.0ubuntu2) ...
Downloading...
--15:24:04-- http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
           => `./install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz'
Resolving fpdownload.macromedia.com... 96.7.66.70
Connecting to fpdownload.macromedia.com|96.7.66.70|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3,044,538 (2.9M) [application/x-gzip]

    0K .....
"

Here is where it stops/hangs, when trying to install flash. A few more dots will come up after "Ok ......", over time, but I can leave it for over 30 minutes and nothing will finish.

I am running Ubuntu 8.04 right now, using firefox, to type these responses.

Oh, and to answer your question more directly: No, I have no issues doing regular Ubuntu upgrades.

Please you post the output of the following commands (just run it in the Terminal application):

 ifconfig

and then start firefox from the Terminal and visit the sites that fail. Please post that output, too.
If you have much output you can paste it here (http://rafb.net/paste) and copy the link here.

Thanks for the responses. Anyone watching this thread note: I will not be able to carry out the last steps provided and post results until tomorrow morning, around 9:00am EDT.

ifconfig:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:72:cc:e2:e7
          inet addr:192.168.172.98 Bcast:192.168.172.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::213:72ff:fecc:e2e7/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:142538 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:42031 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:32477718 (30.9 MB) TX bytes:5388319 (5.1 MB)
          Interrupt:16

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
          RX packets:1348 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1348 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:67400 (65.8 KB) TX bytes:67400 (65.8 KB)

To me it seems, that your router is faulty.
Do you have another one that you can test with?
When you search for RV082 and htttps or RV082 and MTU you find some reports about errors in different firmware versions.

You could try lowering your MTU and see if that helps:
 sudo ifconfig eth0 mtu 1492
More about MTU on this page:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-change-mtu-maximum-transmission-unit-of-network-interface-in-ubuntu-linux.html

Maybe you can access the routers login page now and flash a new firmware or change the MTU settings.

If all doesn't help you could try to reset the router to it's defaults. Check your routers manual for instructions on how to do this.

jgerrits@EARTH:~$ firefox
Login Manager: onStateChange accepted: req = http://start.ubuntu.com/8.04/, flags = 0x30004
Login Manager: domEventListener: got event DOMContentLoaded
Login Manager: Counting logins matching host: http://start.ubuntu.com, formSubmitURL: , httpRealm: null
Login Manager: No alternate nsILoginManagerStorage registered
PwMgr Storage: Checking file signons3.txt (SignonFileName3)
PwMgr Storage: Reading passwords from /home/jgerrits/.mozilla/firefox/zx4nw31m.default/signons3.txt
  ' This next line appears when I browse to www.hotmail.com
Login Manager: onStateChange accepted: req = http://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=10&ct=1219239384&rver=4.5.2130.0&wp=MBI&wreply=http:%2F%2Fmail.live.com%2Fdefault.aspx&id=64855, flags = 0x30004
  ' When this next line appears, the browser window goes blank.
Login Manager: domEventListener: got event DOMContentLoaded

There is my firefox output, took a few to figure out how to show the .debug stuffs for it.

Going to try some of the MTU changes now. My router firmware is up to date.

As far as my network topology goes, the path out is:
Computer > Switch (nortel 48T-PWR) > Router (Linksys RV082) > Fiber Modem.

We run over 25 voip phones, a few servers, (unix & windows), plus a host of 25 computer + a remote office through the network here. And the router has been up/running for over 400 days... even if it were the router/ubuntu not getting along, I would be hard pressed to swap it out/change firmwares to some beta version considering the excellent track record so far. Going to try switching the MTU in ubuntu now.

I don't know if it makes a difference to your "router is bad" synopsis, but I do use the same computer's windows XP partition, and can visit all of these sites without issue.

Thanks for pointing me towards the router issue, it seems a router (my router maybe) is the cause of the issue. Explanation is:

"Because of a recent change in TCP window scale settings in Linux 2.6.17
kernel and higher, you may have had some problems connecting to certain
Web sites. In this tip, I'll show you a workaround for the time-out
problem, but first, let me give you the background on this issue.

A typical TCP packet has a window field that allows for a maximum window
size of 64 KB. While this was sufficient when the Internet was young and
most systems didn't have the power to handle anything greater, it's
quite small for today's bandwidth-hungry applications.

As a result, a solution called window scaling was codified back in 1992;
this provided an extra TCP option that contains an eight-bit scale
factor. The value of this field indicates how much larger the window
size should be by shifting the value of the window sizes by a certain
number of bits. For instance, if the scale factor is set to 5, the
window size would be shifted by 5 bits or multiplied by 32.

The problem is that in 2.6.16 and earlier, the default scale factor was
0, so there was no increase in TCP window sizes. In the 2.6.17 kernel,
this was changed to a value of 7. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a
problem. In practice, however, some "broken" routers are rewriting the
window scale TCP option -- setting the scale factor to 0 but leaving the
actual enabling option in place.

Essentially, all of this means that there are some Web sites that cannot
be connected to from a system using kernel 2.6.17 and higher. The kernel
developer's stance is that those routers are broken and need to be
replaced. In the real world, these routers may continue to operate for
years before being fixed or replaced.

One solution is to reset the Linux kernel's window scaling option. While
this doesn't fix broken routers, it will allow your system to connect to
a remote site if you find you are experiencing the window scaling
problem. If you're unsure whether this is the problem you are having,
you can test it by executing:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_default_win_scale

To make the setting permanent, edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add:

net.ipv4.tcp_default_win_scale = 0

This will disable window scaling completely, which will allow you to
reach some sites you couldn't before. Right or wrong, the kernel
developers refuse to revert the change, so options are either to disable
window scaling on your own and go back to pre-2.6.17 defaults, or
contact those sites that can't be reached and try to convince them to
find and replace the broken routers."

The above text I could not find the original source for, since it was reposted without any annotation... (sorry!)

The workaround for ubuntu 8.04:

1. Edit sysctl.conf, and add: net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0
2. Reboot

I am still having this problem.

Can you break this down for a noob to understand. Do I open a terminal window to do the edit?

edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add the following line into the file somewhere. You will likely have to log in as root in order to do so. The way I did it was:

1. Set up a password for the root account (in the user accounts settings)
2. Press CTRL-SHIFT 1, then log into your root account using the password you just set up
3. Opened "/etc/sysctl.conf" with a text based text editor (I used "vi", but you can use whatever you are comfortable with)
4. Added the line "net.ipv4.tcp_default_win_scale = 0" to the sysctl.conf file (without quotes of course)
5. Save sysctl.conf with the changes you made.
6. Restart your computer and enjoy.

Could you check your router config, please, and check that is NOT enable in the firewall option or Filter Options, something called JAVA Filter Applets, Cookies Filter, Filter ActiveX or Filter Proxy.

@CashBoxer

Please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Add at the end of this file, the row:

net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

Save and exit.

Reboot your Ubuntu pc.

Hope this helps