Originally Posted by
rans6andrew
We have just had our new broadband connected at our new property. We rushed in on Thursday evening after 5 hours in the car getting here about a quarter of an hour before a webinar we wanted to watch was due to happen. We had the new modem router with us, it had been sent to our old address but we had been informed that the connection at our new address had gone live a week earlier. So, we dashed in and I plugged the modem in, powered up my laptop and went to put the kettle on while the modem took five mins to connect and set itself up. On return, with cuppa in hand I entered the passcode to connect the laptop to the router and launched the webinar, all looked good.
About 2 hours later I found access to the internet had stopped. My laptop still thought it was connected to the router but no websites could be found. I reset my network connections and restarted my browser, to no avail. I restarted the laptop and launched the browser again. It still reported a solid link to the router but no webpages could be fetched. The modem/router was still showing a happy blue light and no error lights. As a last resort I reset the modem, waited the 5 mins and found functionality restored. The same thing happened last evening, connectivity between the router and the laptop was apparently OK but no webpages could be fetched. My phone reported the same issue as did another laptop we have with us. WiFi 90% solid but no www. Again a modem/router hard reset restored www access.
When it all stopped again this afternoon I called the techy helpline at our ISP. They wanted me to log in to the router and to check all of the stuff that should be setup when the modem logs onto the ISP systems but, despite the status light showing a good WiFi link the modem could not be accessed. Eventually I was instructed to poke a pin in the hole to force the modem/router to do a factory reset, after the usual 5 mins the system came back up and access to the router settings was enabled. During all of this my laptop was left running suggesting that there is no issue with my laptop. The ISP think that the issues are caused by my laptop because it is running Linux Mint and not Windoze and Firefox instead of Chrome but then that doesn't explain why a Win10 machine and an Android phone showed the same strong Wi|Fi connection but no web access at the same times. They could see our modem and they say it is working normally, even when I can't access either the device settings or the WWW. At their suggestion I logged into the router and changed it from the default channel 6 to channel one with the added suggestion that if that doesn't sort it then to try channel 11. I don't think that this has any merit, I have seen network channel clashing issues before and this doesn't feel like that did. As an aside, my wireless connect page shows very few local links available, compared to our old house location, and all of them much weaker signals......
What should I try next? Might there be something in my connection security settings causing some sort of lockout?
I have yet to find out if the issue still occurs when the laptop is connected to the router by ethernet, I have a short cable but it is not convenient as the laptop is in one room and the router in another. One more complication is that I use a Vonage VOIP phone with answerphone, if it all locks up when I am 5 hours drive away next week I will not be impressed.
Rans6.........
One simple test to run on your laptop with WiFi but no WWW access is a 'ping' test.
Open a command shell and type:
ping
www.bmw.com
(or another website of your choosing but beware that not all sites will reply to a ping - bmw does seem to work)
If you get 'could not find host' or some such then you have a DNS problem
if you get 'pinging <some host and IP address> ...but no reply, then you have a routing problem.