Yes. if the ping requests are timing out, then there is your problem. your computer is not able to talk to the zap2it server in order to retrieve the listings. Can you ping by IP address instead of by hostname? If it still times out, do a trace route to zap2it and see where in the chain it is breaking down.
Well I should clarify, not being able to ping doesn't necessarily mean it is down. The host could be configured to not respond to icmp ping requests, sorry. Browse to labs.zap2it.com in a browser, and try to login.