[botkiller]

Ok, so I just got over what was a banging my head on the keyboard problem somewhat akin to yours. I was finding that I could not login to certain services, such as yahoo mail and my ebay. So, I deleted my dialup connection, created a new one, and installed zonealarm. say what you want about ZA, it still catches a lot of random traffic in and out of your box that you dont need. So, upon installing ZA and dialing up again, I was greeted with a zonelarm asking if I wanted svchost.exe to act as a server. I said no, and all my traffic is now a million times faster than it was before.

everyone is talking about how you need to have svchost.exe running, but i as of yet see no reason. it catches traffic for almost no good reason at all, and, despite what others are saying, slows your computer. I am currently investigating as to if svchost.exe is susceptible to trojans and could be used as a remote server into your box.

but my ultimate point here is that I am not running that program right now, and my traffic is three times as fast over a dialup connection, and that's a lot. I am also able to access servcies that as I said, i was not able to access earlier. So, it's up to you, but if i were you I would tell svchost to screw itself and move on.