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Symptom: OS X seems to stall for a long time while initializing network services on startup or you frequently get messages like "a connection failure has occurred."

Solution: See Apple Knowledge Base Article 106797, a.k.a. "What the heck happened to the internet?!!" and then mess around a lot.

Yesterday, my OS X apps started stalling at or ignoring every request to access an interent address. Local network traffic continued without a hitch. My TiBook could talk to my router, print server and other Macs on the network, but wouldn't load a web page.

Skipping the story of the arduous hours spent trying to figure out what went wrong, I'll cut right to the chase: The order of the domain name servers listed in your Network preferences pane can affect your Mac's ability to connect to the 'net. I have three servers that show up automatically in the Domain Name Servers field when I set my Network preferences to use DHCP to grab an IP address. I got back online by switching to a manual setup and entering the exact same IP addresses in the Domain Name Servers field, BUT IN A DIFFERENT ORDER.

Why this works is a mystery to me, but it works.

[This article has been edited for spelling.]