Internet Losing Connection

February 28, 2021 9:45 AM

About once or twice a week, my internet on my pc will lose connection for about 1-2 minutes. I am on ethernet via a powerline adapter which could be an issue, but the wifi also doesn't work at that time although it is connected to the router with no internet. If I run the diagnostic it says it cannot find the DNS. After a short period, it comes back and works again. I don't think it is a router or service issue because the internet still works on my other devices when this happens. What could be causing this and how can I fix it?
posted by roaring beast to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Response by poster: Just to clarify, it will still be connected to ethernet/lan, but it will not work for 1-2 minutes when this happens (no internet).
posted by roaring beast at 9:48 AM on February 28, 2021

What are your DNS settings? You may be using one from your ISP that's a intermittently unreliable. You might try switching to Google's public DNS servers to see if it helps.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:03 AM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

This used to happen to me when I used AVG free antivirus. I remember Googling it at the time and it was due to some something in AVG that I wasn't able to change. I switched to Avast and the problem went away.
posted by essexjan at 10:06 AM on February 28, 2021

Two possibilities: your ISP is "renewing" your DHCP settings by disconnecting you then reconnecting you (nothing you can do)(

or as @essexjan said, it's your firewall/antivirus acting up.
posted by kschang at 10:09 AM on February 28, 2021

So as I understand it, during one of these outages your computer and your WiFi can't use the Internet, but the other wired devices on your network are still functioning normally? So maybe your wireless router and your PC are both using a DNS provider that is different from the DNS provider used by the other wired devices. That's a bit unusual, but you can use www.dnsleaktest.com to determine which DNS service any given device is using. Just visit that site, and choose "Standard Test".
posted by alex1965 at 10:18 AM on February 28, 2021

One suggestion: keep a note on when this happens. Is it the same time of day every time? The same day of the week? Etc. If yes, it may indicate that something is auto-resetting on a schedule. For example, I have my wifi router set to check for new firmware updates and reset every week. You may have something similar somewhere in your network. Conversely, if there is no pattern to when this happens, it points to other problems.
posted by Mid at 12:11 PM on February 28, 2021

I had this disease. I tried lots of things. Eventually, based upon no particular insight or advice, I removed ZoneAlarm firewall and antivirus, and I was cured. I have no idea why. ZoneAlarm had served me well for a long time.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:32 AM on March 1, 2021

Response by poster: I'm not using any firewall or virus software aside from Windows. It's not at any particular time. I'll give the changing DNS a try. Thanks everyone.
posted by roaring beast at 8:59 AM on March 2, 2021