 <p>I don't think <code>ping</code> is a useful test -- ICMP packets are often dropped on the floor these days -- it isn't the reliable diagnostic that it once was. Sure, if it responds, you've got that -- but if you get a timeout, the most likely answer is a firewall (perhaps Amazon's group policies) <code>DROP</code>s the packet on the floor.</p> <p>Incidentally:</p> <pre><code>$ host bret-truchan.com $ host www.bret-truchan.com www.bret-truchan.com is an alias for bret-truchan.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com. bret-truchan.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com is an alias for s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com. s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com has address 207.171.163.1 $ HEAD www.bret-truchan.com 404 Not Found Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:35:15 GMT Server: AmazonS3 Client-Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:35:15 GMT Client-Peer: 207.171.163.213:80 Client-Response-Num: 1 Client-Transfer-Encoding: chunked X-Amz-Error-Code: NoSuchBucket X-Amz-Error-Detail-BucketName: www.bret-truchan.com X-Amz-Error-Message: The specified bucket does not exist X-Amz-Id-2: MKHMddVEYia5cV0iU33QLg7vt6FgM69jyu+jKjTsh1aVuUR8seGwQQT2sfZrSlu9 X-Amz-Request-Id: 6681133093178B5F </code></pre> <p>If anything, it looks like the hostname <code>www.bret-truchan.com</code> is being used for the bucket -- and you said the bucket was named <code>bret-truchan.com</code> instead. That is probably the reason for the <code>404</code> response.</p> <p>But the dropped <code>ping</code> packets are probably due to Amazon's firewalling.</p>