Help - stumped - can't access some sites ... not sure where to look

I have home astro

- Two interfaces - cable & dsl
- multipath enabled... most routes out cable, but some traffic (voip) out dsl
- using NAT
- most everything is turned off: intrusion prevention, etc
- I have added an "any -> any > Internet" rule. Even tried any->any->any.

This has all worked for a long time...

Recently... I cannot get to some sites (discussions.apple.com, app store, etc) for example from any of my internal machines. But if I pull the cable connection to my astaro box, then I can get to all the sites.

The strange part. I have cloned my laptop mac address into the astaro for seamless switching. When I plug the laptop directly into the cable modem I can get to these sites.

I recently replaced my cable modem with a purchased modem to avoid cable lease fees. But I think the cable is fine as I can access via the laptop connected.

I also recently updated to 9.1

Where should I look? I see nothing interesting in the firewall log, except occasional "default dropped" of traffic from apple servers.