Suddenly cannot access Gmail

September 18, 2010 6:59 PM

Suddenly cannot access Gmail from any browser. Help!

Macbook Pro, 10.5.8.

Suddenly, I cannot access Gmail. Visiting it in all browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) gives me the "unable to connect" screen which it usually gives if I'm disconnected from the Internet or a type in the wrong address. This rules out a specific browser (cookie, cache, etc) issue.

In Terminal, I cannot ping mail.google.com -- "No Route to Host." Pinging other Google domains works fine.

I can browse to all other sites normally.

I can pull up gmail just fine from my iPhone using the exact same Internet connection. This rules out a problem with the connection to the Internet (or anything in between, like a router, etc.)

So this tells me that the problem is something beyond the browser on this computer specifically.

But what?

posted by wordsmith to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I would suspect that it is a gmail problem. give it a bit of time.
posted by HuronBob at 7:03 PM on September 18, 2010

Best answer: Sounds like it might be a DNS thing? I don't know how to flush DNS on a Mac, but I'm sure someone here does.
posted by drjimmy11 at 7:03 PM on September 18, 2010

Best answer: if it is dns, try going to system preferences, network, advanced, dns, and change the dns server to google's dns server (8.8.8.8 or 8.8.8.4), hit "apply" see if that fixes it.
posted by HuronBob at 7:05 PM on September 18, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks Bob, switching to Google's DNS works.
posted by wordsmith at 7:10 PM on September 18, 2010

drjimmy11 gets the credit on this.... mefi teamwork is fantastic!

That said, google's dns servers are hella fast, much better than most isp servers....
posted by HuronBob at 7:39 PM on September 18, 2010

The IP addresses for Google DNS are actually 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/
posted by germdisco at 11:21 PM on September 18, 2010 [1 favorite]