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Strange Internet connectivity issues
Syzygy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm at my wits end trying to solve an internet connectivity problem I've been experiencing lately, so I turn to the PA community for help because everyone seems to be incredibly competent around here.
In a nutshell, what has been happening is I will, at random intervals, lose my connection to whatever web browser I have open at the time as well as Steam (if I have it running) despite the fact that my internet connection status remains at full bars and when examining the "status" window for the connection, displays no problems or connection interruptions either.
Oddly enough, ONLY the web browser and/or steam will become disconnected, other programs like Hamachi and Skype will remain connected.
I've googled this problem extensively over the past week and can find no solution to this problem. What I find most confusing is that there is no apparent cause for this behavior, my connection to the network I currently use has been fine in the 2+ years I've been using it, and my room mate reports no such problems on his end.
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!
In a nutshell, what has been happening is I will, at random intervals, lose my connection to whatever web browser I have open at the time as well as Steam (if I have it running) despite the fact that my internet connection status remains at full bars and when examining the "status" window for the connection, displays no problems or connection interruptions either.
Oddly enough, ONLY the web browser and/or steam will become disconnected, other programs like Hamachi and Skype will remain connected.
I've googled this problem extensively over the past week and can find no solution to this problem. What I find most confusing is that there is no apparent cause for this behavior, my connection to the network I currently use has been fine in the 2+ years I've been using it, and my room mate reports no such problems on his end.
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!
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Next question: Do you use multiple web browsers? If you don't, which one do you use? Could you install Opera or Firefox and tell us if they display the same problem?
Without the answers to those questions, and knowing that service is interrupted by something, I'm going to guess a DNS problem.
Try setting your DNS servers in the Network Properties to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - these are the Google public DNS servers and should always be up if the Internet is. See this page for more details: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using
I use them as a matter of course; it doesn't do me any good to use web site blockers and web privacy managers if Verizon (in my case) knows every site lookup I do.
Yup, same problem. Although, whenever it happens, I am able to just run the network diagnostic tool and that will temporarily alleviate the problem.
Based on what I've learned from other, similiar problems from my google searches, I'd be inclined to agree. Unfortunately, my knowledge of DNS begins and ends with knowing what it is an acronym for.
Thanks, I'll try that. Emphasis on "try", I'm an art/animation major, something I am starting to feel should have been my minor as this problem exacerbates.
Hmm, does using the google DNS server change anything? More or less security? Higher pings in multi-user programs(Stuff like skype or games)?
EDIT: I just noticed I only have internet connectivity on my... IPv4... thingy... and my IPv6 says "Not connected". If the previous sentence didn't make it obvious, I have no idea what either of these things are, or if IPv6 was connected in the past and the disconnected status has anything to do with my current problem.
I'm hoping that this isn't a general problem with your wireless card, let us know what happens after the DNS change (for IPv4)...
If it is down for an extended period open up cmd.exe (you can just type cmd into the start bar and select it), then type this (without the quotation marks) and hit enter: "tracert google.com". What does that report back?
I cannot access anything through a web browser or steam until I use the network diagnostic tool. And it always happens suddenly, without warning; Youtube videos will stop loading halfway through, clicking a link will bring me to a "DNS lookup failed check your connection" screen, etc. As far as the cmd report, this is what it displays:
Options:
-d do not resolve addresses to hostname
-h maximum_hops maximum number of hops to search for target
-j host-list Loose source route along host list (IPv4 only)
-w timeout Wait timeout milliseconds before each reply
-R Trace round trip path (IPv6 only)
-S srcaddr Source Address to use (IPv6 only)
-4 Force using IPv4
-6 Force using IPv6
And that's about it, I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at
looks like what you typed in was "tracert". But what you need to type in is "tracert google.com".
I did. Did it two more times just to be sure and keeps giving me the list of... commands or functions or what have you posted above.
I realllllllly should go back to school and take a couple course in communications and software engineering. If it means I can solve these types of problems without feeling like a caveman then it would pay for itself as far as I'm concerned.
And also because it wasn't mentioned and any tech support thread needs to say it, are your drivers up to date and is your router firmware up to date?
what OS are you running? You might have to run cmd as an admin or something weird. Personally I have a very large hate for anything wireless, I've never had good luck with any wifi cards for my pc, even with the stick being 3 feet away from the wireless modem I'd still get problems like you are experiencing.
If you can't get Tracert working I recommend grabbing the free tool PingPlotter. This thing has provided so much good information on what is happening, it will ping every node your data passes through and will also graph it out in a few different ways
Super weird. Try this one "tracert -d 173.194.33.35". That should circumvent any DNS issues and at least verify an active connection.
Edit - I'm not sure what running cmd as an administrator would do (As per TheKoolEagle's suggestion), but I guess it's worth a shot. When you search for cmd in the start bar, you can right click on it and select run as administrator. It should ask you for a password if you have one.
Edit the second - To keep things moving along I'll just tell you what I am looking for. I don't really know a whole lot about networking, but the tracert command basically sends a "what's up" command to every node between you and the web server you are trying to access (and times how long it takes for that node to respond). Thus it can help you narrow down where the ball is getting dropped when you lose the connection. If you get responses from the first 1-2 nodes, then it has nothing to do with your own network, and is probably something wrong with you service provider. If you get a response from the first 5-6 nodes then it's probably something wrong with the web server you are trying to access. You know something is wrong when tracert tells you the connection timed out, rather than giving you the time it took to contact the node. For example, this is what happens when I enter the tracert command I gave above:
Tracing route to 173.194.33.35 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.2.214.1
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 128.95.214.103
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.132.1.65
4 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.132.1.66
5 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 209.124.190.132
6 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 72.14.223.77
7 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 66.249.94.214
8 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 209.85.253.26
9 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 173.194.33.35
Trace complete.
Also, I just wanted to double check a few things. When you changed the DNS settings, there should have been a box that said Preferred DNS server, and Alternate DNS server, where you entered the google DNS servers. Your previous response wasn't super clear on this, but the webpage linked above lays it out pretty good. Second, make sure that none of your web browsers are set to use a proxy. It differs for each browser, but if you search through the options there should be a place where you can select to not use a proxy. If it looks like a proxy is set up you might have some malware on your computer. That's all for now I guess.
What I typically do when I have connectivity issues like this is from the command prompt try
ping www.google.com
If that gives a result something like That means my network and internet connection are working, and DNS is working. The problem then is maybe that web traffic is being blocked possibly by either a proxy or some other browser related issue. Your problem sounds like it might be somewhere in this category since you say Skype and Hamachi work. I don't know about how Steam does it's community and game authentication stuff, but the client is basically a web browser so that much at least would make sense if your other web stuff isn't working.
After that step, if I get a message saying host not found or a timeout I try something like this:
ping 8.8.8.8
If that works, then my network connection and internet are working, but I have a DNS issue. DNS is the service that turns human friendly things like www.google.com into addresses like 173.194.46.20.
So typically in this maybe your ISPs servers are borked. Try following the advice upthread about changing your DNS servers to Googles.
If pinging an outside server by address isn't working, (again some routers and servers will simply drop ping traffic, but the above Google ones are generally pretty nice about it so they're good to test against) then either your home internet connection is failing at the modem or ISP end, or your PC's network connection has failed.
Find the address of your router/modem. Do this by typing 'ipconfig' (no quotes) in the command prompt. You should see something like
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.5 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1Though in your case it will say Wireless Network instead of Local Area. Your default gateway is your router.type in ping followed by that address.
If you can't reach that, your connection or your router is borked.
At least at this point I now know it was most definitely a problem with the router seeing as my connection has remained constant and uninterrupted since the swap. Again, just want to thank all of you guys for your contributions!
solving an internet connection is about process of elimination. remove wireless. remove extra devices. test different routers. remove parts of your network systematically until there is only three components - the connection itself (with a modem if it requires a cable modem) a router that you know cannot possibly be faulty, and one computer, hardwired to the router with an ethernet cable. At that point, the only remaining thign to do is test the computer with another internet connection, to isolate it down to the connection itself.