NETSCAPE works, while PING does not

[Alessandro Ghigi <ghigi@math.mit.edu>]

There are some addresses I cannot ping, while I can access them with
Netscape, ftp or finger (depending on the type). I can't figure out what
is difference between these addresses and the ones which I can ping
succesfully.
Also, if I try traceroute on an address which ping can reach, I just get
"* * *"instead of the list of addresses.

I found this problem while using dselect to upgrade.

I have this problem since I changed my provider. The new one need a
command ('slirp -P') after the password, so I didn't use pppconfig to
create the files /etc/chatscripts and /etc/ppp/peers, but wrote them
manually. I also wrote manually the /etc/resolv.conf file.

The Ethernet card is off, so it should not be fault of network.opts.

Thank you
Alessandro

P.S. I have a potato installed on a laptop.