ping

We can ping out but the return never comes back even to localhost

ping localhost
PING loopback: (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=0 ms

it just sits there....
any ideas, any files to check

What do your host routes look like 'netstat -nr'? What do netsvc.conf and resolv.conf look like?

Cheers,

Keith