After upgrading to Lion my internet connection doesn't work

Question

Hey folks,
     MacPro 2010, wired connection through Verizon FiOS, upgraded to Lion (via App Store) back in July, but now my wife says she can't get on the Interent
on her account, even though all connections are good, she has an IP, subnet, DNS are good, the ethernet settings say she is connected, but using Chrome (13.0.782.122) or Safari, just hangs on browser launch. No URL will resolve no matter what site I enter. But when I log out of her account and into mine I can connect using the same Chrome browser just fine.
     The only thing I can come up with is Chrome has had issues for quite some time on Snow Leopard and Lion when trying to update. About Chrome will display there is a new version and hitting the Install button will result in a "Update Server not available Error Code: 12". Any workaround by the Chrome Blog was not helpful, and uninstalling and reinstalling the program would sometimes work. But every so often when I would manually check About Chrome it would mysteriously be updated all by itself, and I was fine. Eventually though, every so often I would check and it would say there's a new version and I would get the infamous error. I could never seem to update the program myself. I would have to wait until it did it on its own?
I don't know if fooling around with Chrome's insides (using AppTrap to get rid of Chrome, manually deleting Preferences.js files, etc) corrupted something on my wifes account, which is a limited account and had some Parental Controls enabled - although she had Allow Unrestricted Access to Internet Sites checked off. I DID, however, have the Apps section restricted at some level, and I believe certain Chrome features were blocked ( like google updater), because while logged into her account, chrome would pop up: "you don't have access to GoogleUpdater...etc" and another one named   "xml or xmd" something or other, I can't remember exactly so I apologize. But while troubleshooting the no internet issue, I hit "Always Allow" for both messages, put in my password and she still couldn't get on the web, even when I turned off Parental Controls altogether. I couldn't even do a Software Update, it would just not move.
I even opened a Terminal window and Pinged www.google.com and was receiving replys at a steady rate, so I don't know what else to try. Safari is also exhibiting this same behavior, so I'm thinking its a common issue with both browsers since both use Webkit? I could be wrong obviously...
I'm at a loss as to what it could be or what to test out. Any help would be welcomed.
Philip

Answer 1

I had this problem on SL and on Lion as well, and it occures for WiFi and Ethernet connections.
In fact the internet connection was not broken as I could ping the destination usin the IP (not DNS name).
In this case the problem was related to mDNSResponder task which handles all dns queries.
It was the most frequent problem in my day to day work with SL and now Lion. It was never fixed by any patch from Apple. I tried almost all voodoo including fresh install, all possible config changes - no solution.
The only version with no problems related to network was 10.5.8. All the other versions had issues of different kind (WiFi instability (lost signal), DNS problems (for wireless and wired connection) sometimes associated with machine sleep and wake up and sometimes with no reason.
QUESTION: Is your problem independent of the access point / router you connect to.
I must say networking was (and still is) the weakest part, besides the other OS X weaknesses I experienced during 4 years of OS X usage.
No problems in the same network with Linux or Windows beeing ran natively on my iMac So hardware is OK.
Software is of poor quality. Not much more to say in this matter.
I found a very interesting article dated 1996 about programming which I think is still valid.
Link to the article: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html
Below the fragment (with some connection to Apple)
Software is everything. It also s***s.
"It's like pre-Sumerian civilization," says Brad Cox, who wrote the software for Steve Jobs NeXT computer and is a professor at George Mason University. "The way we build software is in the hunter-gatherer stage."