Really fustrating problem with my net connection.. or something to do with it!

[pahecko]

Ok, here the annoyance (which at this point has gone BEYOND)

I'll be surfing my merry way and either i stumble on to a site, receive a url from a friend or just type in one I visit often (like anandtech.com) and BAM i get the "oh no, i cant' find www.anandtech.com" or whatever. So I site there entering the url and hitting enter again and again and again until it finally goes. This happens both on IE and Firefox.

Can some please enlighten with a solution? Like I said, it started as an annoyance, but now, it's go time!

 

[myusername]

got DSL? router?

 

[pahecko]

dang it. got carried away with my rant.

DSL connection (4Mbps down, 1Mbps up) and a MS wireless g router (don't ask). The computer is wired though.

I'd have to double check, but I believe I don't have this problem with the laptop.

 

[myusername]

I have no idea *why* (since it should have just not functioned at all from what I can tell), but changing the MTU to 1492 (in the router - down from default 1500) seemed to fix this problem for me.

Or else it was coincidence and I have nooo business being in the tech forum.

Personally I suspect the latter, but wth, you can give it a shot and see if it does anything

Edit: FYI the router was dropping connection with the ISP - although in my case it was unable to reconnect without a router reboot - it worked fine for months at 1500, so I assume that my ISP changed something on their end, but changing the MTU seems to have fixed it (fingers crossed for 1 week now)

 

[bluestrobe]

Might be a bad proxy server on the ISP side of things. Cox.net tried using proxies locally like that in the late 90's and they got overloaded and froze numerous times.

 

[happyshopping007]

if the computer have some firewall or security software, it maybe block the website.

 

[fuzzynavel]

try taking the router out of the equation and just connect your computer straight to the net
or is the wireless G one of these combined modem/router thingys?

 

[Wizkid]

It could be a DNS error... what EXACT error do you get in IE?

 

[cleverhandle]

Yeah, it sounds like DNS from the error you described. That could be a sign that 1) your DSL connection is flaky, leading to interrupted DNS lookups, or 2) the ISP's DNS is crappy and sometimes rejects connections. Try a speedtest to make sure your connection is performing as you expect. If that looks OK, I'd say the problem lies with the ISP's DNS - not that their going to do anything about if you complain. I've seen several complaints from people about certain ISP's DNS servers being regularly crappy.

 

[pahecko]

Originally posted by: fuzzynavel
try taking the router out of the equation and just connect your computer straight to the net or is the wireless G one of these combined modem/router thingys?

I'll have to try that. Though why would it affect my connection through ethernet and not through wifi ?

I've restarted the router (since I know I haven't for a while) to see if that fixes the issue.

Originally posted by: Wizkid
It could be a DNS error... what EXACT error do you get in IE?

The exact error : "www.anandtech.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again." That was in firefox.

Thanks for the help!

 

[nweaver]

Do you have RoadRunner DSL?

 

[pahecko]

Originally posted by: nweaver
Do you have RoadRunner DSL?

Naw, my service is from Bell Canada. Sympatico.

 

[Wizkid]

I use Sympatico too... same problem... lol I just added some different DNS servers to my machine (under properties for the network connection) and it worked fine. I just used the IP of my dedicated server...

 

[pahecko]

HA! I found the "problem". When I disabled MAC filtering, not only is everything faster, but I don't get that error.

Is this a trade off with using mac filtering or is my router crap?