mail and web start in offline mode

[JoeHill <joehill@teksavvy.com>]

When I start either my mail client, Claws, or Firefox web browser, they are in
offline mode.

I'm thinking this is not a setting in either of those apps, since I cannot get
Firefox to change even by setting 'online' to 'true' in about:config, and I'm
looking for where this setting might be in either a system or desktop config,
but I cannot find anything that relates to this in networking properties or in
the settings for XFCE.

Any ideas where I can look for something like this?

-- 
Joe