I attempted what you suggested EA_David, initially with no luck. Then for the heck of it I connected my computer directly to my modem and I'll be darned if it did'nt work fine. Seems the firewall on my router was the culprit, I suspect the router itself developed a fault. I found it would work only if I disabled the firewall completely. I replaced the router and things are functioning as they should now. I guess it was coincidence it went bad right when 1.1 came out.
So your suggestions got me to the solution, thank you.
DW