Local Only?

When I got a new computer last year equipped with Vista Premium, I noticed that my internet connection would sometimes degrade to something called "Local Only".

I was baffled the first time I saw this. Local Only? What the fuck is that? I thought it meant that I could only access websites that originated in the area where I lived.

But I was soon disabused of that notion. I tried clicking on the site for my town's newspaper and I was just as unable to access that as I was any other website. I discovered that when the connection reads "Local Only", you can't access any websites.

A "Local Only" connection isn't any sort of a connection at all. You are, for all intents and purposes, offline. Using dial-up, when I'm reduced to "Local Only", I have to officially disconnect and then reconnect.

So, going back to my original question: What the fuck does "Local Only" mean? What purpose does it serve? On my two previous computers with Windows 95 and Windows XP, respectively, you were either online or offline. There wasn't any of this "local only" limbo, a connection that didn't connect you to anything.

Perhaps some of the techie geeks here can clear this one up for me.