Of all things, I’ve decided to dial up on my laptop to see how well it works. I switched my cable provider over to Earthlink, and they have a Sikeston dial-up number. I tried dialing in several times. I could then access e-mail and even FTP, but the web browser didn’t work.
Finally, I found out that the web settings were configured to go through a proxy server. I turned that off, and it fixed the problem. This is the second configuration error that I’ve found in which I suspect Earthlink’s own software as the cause. The first was an incorrect SMTP setting that made it impossible to send e-mail. If I weren’t computer savvy, some poor dude in technical support would be hearing it now.