Okay so I, recently had my modem die on me... I also got a laptop with wi-fi so I figured I would replace my modem with one that had a wireless 'router' feature already on it (figured it would save me space instead of having a router and a modem, not to mention some cash) so I replaced it with a 2wire 1000HG that I got for 20 bucks from a friend who now has cable lol .... I put a Netgear RP614 router on that to network my 2 desktop machines (an Opteron 170 and a P4 3.0 GHZ)

The problem was that with my Opteron and my Pentium 4 I couldnt access hotmail. I could go to the log in page, enter the email & password hit enter.... and then it would stay at the "loging in" stage and shortly after I would get a "page cannot be displayed" ... So I searched and came across this forum and it seems that people have had this same problem and most managed to fix it with a tool that can be found at http://www.dslreports.com/front/DRTCP021.exe ... by simply runing the program entering 1492 in the MTU ...

Well this worked GREAT for me and I couldnt be happier... I did it to both computers and now they can both access hotmail and right now I am very happy, pleased, and wish to thank who ever figured that out....

Yet my question is why does it work? lol I know some of you may think that I should just accept it and move on... but if any one knows why it works. plz do tell

Why the number 1492? I know its set at 1500 but why 8 less?
What is the MTU?
Why do I change it in my net adapters? I mean they worked just fine with my other modem... and they work fine if I connect either PC directly to the 1000HG, how does it make sence that the pc net adapter is what needs to be "set" differently? since at first I thought it would be an issue with a router being on a "router"....

well sorry for the NOOB question... just trying to become a little more educated.

First off, I want to apologize for the late reply.

I might be wrong, but I believe it's a port name in the computer. I dunno why its 1494.

The MTU is a limit, expressed in bytes, on the size of data sent over a network

I dunno about the other ones...it's not my specialty.