Connect me, please
July 10, 2016 3:41 AM Subscribe
All of my devices cannot connect to websites other than Facebook, Google and Yahoo Mail, and to Skype. Why and how can I fix this?
I am living in an Air BnB apartment for the whole of July, so would really like internet other than on my phone (where I only get 3GB a month, so no tethering). I would also really like typing on my computer instead of my phone, although I have a bluetooth keyboard.
Why can both my laptops (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge with both Ubuntu and Windows 8 and HP Stream ob Windows 8.1) as well as my Kindle Fire and iPhone SE only connect to sites like Facebook (and even then, messenger calls don't work), Yahoo Mail and Google, which doesn't lead anywhere because no other sites load?
Skype works, so I can do online therapy there instead of the secure site they use, and I can call my family and long-distance partner, but I cannot watch my comfort shows, play online games (although The Sims 4 managed to update themselves via Origin) and upload my stories or play RPGs comfortably.
Please don't tell me to just spend a month offline. I really need all the comfort and distraction I can get right now, but going out is not always an option because I am also in the middle of adjusting my thyroid meds and sometimes, all I can do is sit in front of the screen and watch Gilmore Girls or similar.
What can I do here? What causes this?
I am living in an Air BnB apartment for the whole of July, so would really like internet other than on my phone (where I only get 3GB a month, so no tethering). I would also really like typing on my computer instead of my phone, although I have a bluetooth keyboard.
Why can both my laptops (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge with both Ubuntu and Windows 8 and HP Stream ob Windows 8.1) as well as my Kindle Fire and iPhone SE only connect to sites like Facebook (and even then, messenger calls don't work), Yahoo Mail and Google, which doesn't lead anywhere because no other sites load?
Skype works, so I can do online therapy there instead of the secure site they use, and I can call my family and long-distance partner, but I cannot watch my comfort shows, play online games (although The Sims 4 managed to update themselves via Origin) and upload my stories or play RPGs comfortably.
Please don't tell me to just spend a month offline. I really need all the comfort and distraction I can get right now, but going out is not always an option because I am also in the middle of adjusting my thyroid meds and sometimes, all I can do is sit in front of the screen and watch Gilmore Girls or similar.
What can I do here? What causes this?
Best answer: Sounds like a DNS issue -- the internet is working, but it can't translate human readable domain names ("bing.com") to IP address (123.156.189.1).
This could definitely be the router -- routers generally assign connected devices non-internet-routing addresses like 192.168.0.101 or 10.0.0.45, and then the router handles all DNS traffic.
On your laptops, you can supercede the router by opening your network settings, and change the DNS server setting from 'automatically detect' to 'manual', and set your DNS servers as 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 -- those are Google-run public DNS servers, which have extremely high reliability.
You may also want to test first by opening a CMD window on the Windows machines (or bash in Ubuntu) and try a "nslookup {some website you haven't been to in a while}" and "ping {same website}" and "ping 8.8.8.8" -- if the first two throw errors, but the last one works, then it's definitely a DNS issue. Rebooting the router may resolve it without doing any network changes on your laptops.
(The reason you can get to those common websites is your devices cache DNS results for a while, to ensure consistency and not overtax DNS servers...but the cache doesn't last forever, they will eventually stop working too, if they can't do DNS resolution.)
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:26 AM on July 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
This could definitely be the router -- routers generally assign connected devices non-internet-routing addresses like 192.168.0.101 or 10.0.0.45, and then the router handles all DNS traffic.
On your laptops, you can supercede the router by opening your network settings, and change the DNS server setting from 'automatically detect' to 'manual', and set your DNS servers as 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 -- those are Google-run public DNS servers, which have extremely high reliability.
You may also want to test first by opening a CMD window on the Windows machines (or bash in Ubuntu) and try a "nslookup {some website you haven't been to in a while}" and "ping {same website}" and "ping 8.8.8.8" -- if the first two throw errors, but the last one works, then it's definitely a DNS issue. Rebooting the router may resolve it without doing any network changes on your laptops.
(The reason you can get to those common websites is your devices cache DNS results for a while, to ensure consistency and not overtax DNS servers...but the cache doesn't last forever, they will eventually stop working too, if they can't do DNS resolution.)
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:26 AM on July 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
Response by poster: I have no idea how to do that, but the problem seems to have resolved itself on my Thinkpad at least. For now.
posted by LoonyLovegood at 5:01 AM on July 10, 2016
posted by LoonyLovegood at 5:01 AM on July 10, 2016
I hope it's okay to piggyback on this since the problems seems to be resolved. I had the exact same issue a few months ago, and my internet provider's helpdesk was worse than useless with it. For me, the issue was intermittent. It resolved itself (sometimes after restarting the router), and then it came back.
(The reason you can get to those common websites is your devices cache DNS results for a while, to ensure consistency and not overtax DNS servers...but the cache doesn't last forever, they will eventually stop working too, if they can't do DNS resolution.)
is the first logical explanation I have read about why I could still get to Twitter and Facebook and not to popular Dutch sites like nu.nl. But I do open nu.nl more often than Twitter, so you would think that that would be cached too. As soon as this problem started, all my regular websites were unreachable, except for Facebook and Twitter. Are big popular worldwide websites like Facebook and Twitter treated differently by my OS or router than other websites?
posted by blub at 7:01 AM on July 10, 2016
(The reason you can get to those common websites is your devices cache DNS results for a while, to ensure consistency and not overtax DNS servers...but the cache doesn't last forever, they will eventually stop working too, if they can't do DNS resolution.)
is the first logical explanation I have read about why I could still get to Twitter and Facebook and not to popular Dutch sites like nu.nl. But I do open nu.nl more often than Twitter, so you would think that that would be cached too. As soon as this problem started, all my regular websites were unreachable, except for Facebook and Twitter. Are big popular worldwide websites like Facebook and Twitter treated differently by my OS or router than other websites?
posted by blub at 7:01 AM on July 10, 2016
Response by poster: Sure! My problem might return soon, so let's figure out as much as we can!
posted by LoonyLovegood at 7:08 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by LoonyLovegood at 7:08 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I wonder if there's anything throttling up bandwidth, and once it reaches a certain level of usage, it only allows some basic e-mail/social media/messaging options open, locking out everything else.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2016
posted by lmfsilva at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2016
Response by poster: I had the same theory, but Facebook has so much more data volume than MetaFilter due to all the pictures, so that seems weird. Plus, GoogleMail was down.
posted by LoonyLovegood at 8:15 AM on July 10, 2016
posted by LoonyLovegood at 8:15 AM on July 10, 2016
I once looked up how to set up a system like that (without the bandwidth throttling, which I don't recall if it was a option for unlisted MACs) and it worked by whitelisting sub/domains, not throttling each one individually according to usage.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:45 AM on July 10, 2016
posted by lmfsilva at 8:45 AM on July 10, 2016
But I do open nu.nl more often than Twitter, so you would think that that would be cached too.
The length of time a record for a site is cached* is set by the the DNS record for that site, the TTL (Time to Live) parameter. Different sites can have a different TTL — normal sites keep it relatively short so that any changes propagate efficiently. More on TTL here.
Assuming you don’t purge it or otherwise force a new DNS resolution.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 9:01 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
The length of time a record for a site is cached* is set by the the DNS record for that site, the TTL (Time to Live) parameter. Different sites can have a different TTL — normal sites keep it relatively short so that any changes propagate efficiently. More on TTL here.
Assuming you don’t purge it or otherwise force a new DNS resolution.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 9:01 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
$ dig +nocmd +multiline +noall +answer any nu.nl [...] 14400 ; refresh (4 hours) 1800 ; retry (30 minutes) 604800 ; expire (1 week) 86400 ; minimum (1 day) ) $ dig +nocmd +multiline +noall +answer any twitter.com [...] 3600 ; refresh (1 hour) 600 ; retry (10 minutes) 604800 ; expire (1 week) 60 ; minimum (1 minute)If I understand this correctly, this seems to indicate that twitter.com has a much shorter TTL than nu.nl. That seems like it is relevant, but it's the opposite from what I would expect.
In my case, one moment "the internet" would just work, and then it would stop and only Facebook and Twitter would still work. It was not that there was some kind of gray period during which more and more sites would stop working.
posted by blub at 9:36 AM on July 10, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by LoonyLovegood at 4:06 AM on July 10, 2016