you're probably right, i suspected after spending some time thinking, that its the net (isp). i play a nexon mmorpg that i believe is hosted on US servers, that works fine. in the past i was on ntl/virgin broadband and i used to play ssc mg ctf fine, even when i was at uni. so i guess it is a talktalk issue... would changing the dns server have any effect? i tried google's public dns but to no avail. F!!!!! oh well no mg ctf for me then.