news servers and port 119

["Paul B. Bertrand" <paul.bertrand@mindspring.com>]

I recently upgraded to a generic 2.4.8-k6 kernel from a 2.2.17 kernel
and found that I am no longer able to connect to my non-isp newsserver,
namely giganews.  I am, however, still able to connect to my isp
newsserver.  Initially, I thought this was a giganews or isp issue, but
when I rebooted with my old kernel, I was able to connect to my
giganews.

Does anyone know why I wouldn't be able to connect to a newsserver
outside of my isp?  I don't remember ever doing anything special in
order to do this before, especially with the kernel.

This is the error message I receive:

Connecting to host news-central.giganews.com
 ...connection to 216.166.62.35, port 119:Connection refused
Unable to make connection. Giving up.
slrn fatal error:
Failed to initialize server.

I also tried using port 23 but that didn't work either.  Also, I am able
to ping giganews with the new kernel.

Thanks for your help.

Paul