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

January 2, 2005 9:19 PM

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?
posted by luser to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

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.
posted by tumult at 9:34 PM on January 2, 2005

There's a signpost up ahead. Next stop: the METAFILTER zone.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:35 PM on January 2, 2005

Response by poster: 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?
posted by luser at 9:40 PM on January 2, 2005

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.
posted by shepd at 9:40 PM on January 2, 2005

Response by poster: I'm sorry, I'm clueless. What do I do with these IPs?
posted by luser at 9:42 PM on January 2, 2005

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.
posted by juv3nal at 9:56 PM on January 2, 2005

Yeah, those are IPs for some root DNS servers. They aren't going down any time soon. :)
posted by shepd at 9:59 PM on January 2, 2005

Response by poster: 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.")
posted by luser at 10:07 PM on January 2, 2005

Response by poster: Just switched it back to comcast DNS and now everything works suddenly. *shrug*
posted by luser at 10:10 PM on January 2, 2005

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
posted by pyramid termite at 4:58 AM on January 3, 2005

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.
posted by glenwood at 7:32 AM on January 3, 2005

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.
posted by mothershock at 7:55 AM on January 3, 2005

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.
posted by Mitheral at 2:25 PM on January 3, 2005