1. Traceroutes and pings to the rest of the world work correctly, so I
don't think the problem is with the DSL provider.

2. Going from the other direction, I can ping 69.17.82.122 and
208.45.200.102. I can also ping them from just about any other
network. So I don't think that ping has been disabled on either
router.

3. I have seen problems in the past where an improper (too wide open of
a) netmask led to one-way routing problems.

4. The return traceroute uses asymmetrical routing supposedly - it
takes a very different return path:

# traceroute 165.236.196.1
traceroute: Warning: Multiple interfaces found; using 66.93.249.81 @
hme0
traceroute to 165.236.196.1 (165.236.196.1), 30 hops max, 40 byte
packets
1 dsl093-249-065.mia1.dsl.speakeasy.net (66.93.249.65) 0.705 ms
0.593 ms 0.487 ms
2 dsl092-214-001.atl1.dsl.speakeasy.net (66.92.214.1) 45.466 ms
39.226 ms 39.567 ms
3 220.ge-0-1-0.cr2.atl1.speakeasy.net (69.17.82.121) 39.361 ms
54.474 ms 64.200 ms
4 208.45.200.101 (208.45.200.101) 55.452 ms 62.003 ms 55.483 ms
5 205.171.221.13 (205.171.221.13) 63.955 ms 27.182 ms 40.397 ms
6 205.171.21.169 (205.171.21.169) 39.510 ms 39.607 ms 35.393 ms
7 0.so-3-0-0.BR1.ATL4.ALTER.NET (204.255.169.81) 33.017 ms 46.181
ms 39.552 ms
8 0.so-2-2-0.XL2.ATL4.ALTER.NET (152.63.86.174) 40.130 ms 54.755 ms
55.546 ms
9 0.so-3-0-0.CL2.JAX1.ALTER.NET (152.63.83.157) 62.869 ms 61.605 ms
63.073 ms
10 251.ATM6-0.GW5.JAX1.ALTER.NET (152.63.84.237) 63.028 ms 63.198 ms
87.193 ms
11 xspedius-jax-gw.customer.alter.net (65.195.232.254) 62.994 ms
124.978 ms 55.549 ms
12 ftldfl-01-so-2-0-0.xspedius.net (206.222.122.18) 71.659 ms 79.111
ms 78.778 ms
13 216.85.80.6 (216.85.80.6) 78.698 ms 70.297 ms 78.598 ms
14 199.227.6.82 (199.227.6.82) 79.002 ms 61.832 ms 63.063 ms
15 165.236.196.1 (165.236.196.1) 63.070 ms 65.742 ms *

5. Note that the 205.171.221 qwest node routes to the 205.171.21 qwest
node and then routes to 204.255.169 (alter.net) instead of 192.205.33
(att.net).

6. I'm pretty sure the problem is with 69.17.82.122 and 208.45.200.102.
Speakeasy can't test a route through 208.45.200.102 and qwest seems to
be unreachable - none of their public looking glasses route through
208.45.200.102.