Comments on: Why can't I get to the internet (except Metafilter)?

Question: Why can't I get to the internet (except Metafilter)?

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:19:42 -0800

Very weird. The only website I can get to right now is the Metafilter family. Everything else times out with the error "www.cnn.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again." Dozens of other sites return the same error.

I'm on a cable modem. Win XP. My vonage phone works fine, as does email. I restarted the computer and the router. What the heck is going on?

By: tumult

tumult — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:34:43 -0800

your isp's dns is probably down, and you have metafilter.com in a dns cache somewhere. wait for it to come back up, get a dns IP from a friend to borrow, or call your isp and complain.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:35:52 -0800

There's a signpost up ahead. Next stop: the METAFILTER zone.

By: luser

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:40:00 -0800

you have metafilter.com in a dns cache somewhere.

Why mefi but not the other pages I'm hitting constantly, such as CNN, which is my browser start page?

By: shepd

shepd — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:40:23 -0800

Well, this would help you in the meantime if you could get to it... :-D

Try one of these: 192.228.79.201, 198.41.0.4, 192.33.4.12

Enjoy. You probably shouldn't leave it set up like that forever.

By: luser

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:42:01 -0800

I'm sorry, I'm clueless. What do I do with these IPs?

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:56:32 -0800

those are, i'm guessing, ip addresses for dns servers.
if your problem is due to a dns server issue, that should take care of it. dunno about xp, but for win2k it's under tcpip properties for your network connection where you can specify a dns server instead of automatically detecting one.

By: shepd

shepd — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 21:59:29 -0800

Yeah, those are IPs for some root DNS servers. They aren't going down any time soon. :)

By: luser

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 22:07:21 -0800

OK, I changed TCP/IP settings to point to a couple of shepd's DNS servers instead of using comcast's.

I do nslookup and I get "DNS request timed out" on both. ("Can't find server name for address.")

By: luser

luser — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 22:10:07 -0800

Just switched it back to comcast DNS and now everything works suddenly. *shrug*

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 04:58:52 -0800

this happens to me about once a week ... it's rather annoying but usually it comes back within an hour ... i thought about trying another dns server next time, so shopd's list will be useful

By: glenwood

glenwood — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 07:32:51 -0800

are you using firefox perchance? this is a semi-common issue with firefox. try going to about:config and toggle network.dns.disableipv6 to true. then clear your cache out and restart firefox.

of course, if you aren't using firefox then, what those other people said.

By: mothershock

mothershock — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 07:55:01 -0800

Firefox and my firewall program don't get along. Sometimes I just have to close the firewall, try the website address again, connect, and then restart the firewall. Probably not the greatest solution, but it works for me.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:25:46 -0800

If yourin pyramid termite's sistuation it may be worth it to maintain your own host files for your top dozen most visited sites. That way you can still get to CNN/Metafilter/etc. when your local dns is down. Assuming your tied to such a sucky ISP.