VB.NET JSON data from website

VB.NET JSON data from website

I'm currently using VB .NET 2010. I'm trying to read data from a JSON
request from the website
https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/ws/search.json (Guild Wars 2
site).
The website requires you to be logged in via the forums. Even having this
in my vb app via a webbrowser object, I am still receiving a 401
Unauthorized error. I assume some sort of cookie is needed???
The biggest issue I have is trying to run the larger search @
https://tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net/ws/search.json?text=&levelmin=0&levelmax=80&count=0
This gives me the error "Unable to download search.json from
tradingpost-live.ncplatform.net. Unable to open this Internet site. The
requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again
later.
By using Firefox, I can login and view each of these 2 sites without any
issues. Any chance I can get a pointer in the right direction? So far I've
installed JSON.NET but have no clue how to use it or if I should be doing
something else...... almost midnight and my brain is fried!