Just to update those of you who helped out above - problems continued on the xbox 360 issue so I went to the source. Microsoft online chat was no help - for some reason they decided that as I was trying to use ICS that I had to call a 800 number and they would not touch it.

Called the 800 number, got transferred a few times, got a guy who was reading off of a script and plugged in a few different DNS numbers at his suggestion (DNS was where it was hanging at this point). He finally went off to talk to a supervisor and came back to announce that the problem was that I was using W2k Pro and that ICS would only work with the Xbox 360 if I used XP.

That made no sense to me at all, seemed like a cop-out by folks who couldn't find my issue in their script, so I continued to play on my own. Next step was to shut down zone alarm. Everything worked perfectly, immediately. Go figure.

Having won that battle, I put in an ethernet line to that corner of the house the next day since I had to be under there anyhow. Now it is blazingly fast and no need to hook up laptops, etc...

As for the two laptops sharing a dial-up - the girlfriend finally claimed that extra laptop yesterday before I got back to trying to sort that one out. Oh well, it was just a PIII so Folding at home won't lose that much processing power...

Thanks for the help, TJ