Packets Sent Increasing Rapidly

I am trying to help out a friend who can no longer access the Internet and
is 12 time zones away.
He is accessing the Internet via cable modem connected to a NIC in his
desktop.
He is running McAfee VirusScan PRO including its firewall.

The sent packets in Local Area Connection are increasing * very * rapidly
while received are going up very slowly if at all.
He is unable to ping any sites.
He has tried restoring from a System State backup from last week which he
thinks is before this problem started but the restore has not helped.

We both thank you for any assistance.

Try restarting the PC and try disabling the firewall temporarily to see if that's the cause.