Ok my boss had an old netgear router and the wireless bit died last week so I told him with current prices go pick up a new one.
He got a Netgear wgt624 v4 very pretty with a cute set-up wizard.
Th wizard runs fine and it says it has retrieved an IP address from Virgin but the browser (both IE6 IE7 and Firefox all draw a blank but heres the weird thing connect the PC direct to the Cable Modem and its hunky dory.
Connect through the router and its dead as the proverbial doornail. But get a command prompt and you get a Ping from any global IP you care to use including the default web page one UK.Yahoo.com.
We rang Virgin Media and the help guy was as baffled as I was he reckoned it was a firewall problem so I tried various options on the router to no avail.
To cut things short I took the router back to PC World and they said they have had a few back already. I swapped it for a Lynksys it was not as easy to set up but it worked a dream. (go figure)
So if you are banging your head against the wall over this one don't. Stop damaging the wall and swap out the router for another brand.