That puts me in my place.
I still remain disappointed that professional techs from both the router and ISP weren't able to spot an obvious issue like this. I don't deal with networks often unless I program them myself (and then for some silly reason they always work :-P)
It shouldn't have taken me this long... the issue should be documented with the router or on the manufacturers site as I am downright positive this must come up often. How many thousands of customers use earthlink DSL and these name brand routers on plain jane XP installations... It happened on linksys, d-link, asante, and hawking routers! Not one of them has it documented and techs at Asante and Hawking don't know about it either.... I only found out by running randomly generated packets through the router overnight... I had to phrickin code it myself... sheesh...