very strange cookie issue

i've been trying to fix this all day, and could use some help

my setup:

i have an apache server (1.3.29 on linux) on my home network. I use this
server for development (perl).

i have a site that uses Apache::AuthCookie for authentication

i access this site through 192.168.0.56/nameofsite.com

submitting the login form (username/password) sets the cookie and I'm in,
always has worked until today.

all of a sudden I can't set cookies when accessing this server. It still
worked using firefox so I figured it may be my IE, but I've tried it from IE
on 3 different machines on the network that haven't been touch in a while
and same result. also have tried the live site (different server) with IE
and it works fine (same exact code, even brought that code down to my dev
machine to check, no go)

I tried setting IE to prompt for cookies and there is no prompt, it's as if
it's automatically blocking IE cookies. I know if it's checking against the
database because if I put in the wrong password it tell me so. So again,
it's for some reason auto rejecting IE cookies.


Any help would be appreciated and please reply to the group.

Thanks