I'm feeling a little silly ! I've spent the past two days trying to get the example web client sketch to work. I could create a echo program that allowed me to connect to the arduino through the ethernet shield and echo back what I typed. However try as I might I could not get the board to connect to the outside world and download a web page.
Answer: the example web_client program assumes the gateway is on IP XX.XX.XX.1 , but thats not always the case. If you need to use a gateway that is not on XX.XX.XX.1 then:
byte ip[] = { 192,168,1,23};
byte gateway[] = { 192,168,1,254};
byte server[] = { 209,85,227,103 }; // Google
Client client(server, 80);
void setup()
{
Ethernet.begin(mac, ip,gateway);
Hope this isn't a FAQ
Andy
Just starting Arduino programming.