Macs will not connect to wifi/network???

[SurferMan]

Up north at fams. Had this happen numerous times on my Macs when travelling but I usually can do part of my biz online/cloud from tablet (obviously prefer a laptop) however this week I had to do a bunch of stuff from my laptop and can't get online. All sites say that "this Webpage is not available blah blah blah". Ran diagnostics and airport/airport settings/network settings are fine, but isp/internet/server all say failed. This is on both the 13 and 15. Wife's cousin is in and she's the only other one with a Mac and same issue. All windows laptops are fine, android phones and tablets fine, iPhones and iPads are fine.

I'm not going to reset and go through their network to figure it out, that's ridiculous and shouldn't have to. Went to coffee shop and same thing, worked fine at her cousins house though.

But have had this happen numerous times when travelling and friends with Macs have said the same thing. Wife's uncle switched to a Windows laptop b/c he travels all over the world for work and got sick of network issues on his Mac. So what causes this?

 

[CarreraGuy]

I sense some sort of conspiracy...

But seriously, is it possible the router is setup to allow only known hosts? i.e a list of allowed MAC addresses (not Mac as in Apple but the hardware MAC address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address)

It sounds like it may be your end since the coffee shop didn't work either.. but maybe coffee shop has something similarly funky with their router setup?

I've used my 2010 cMBP in so many places: friends, family, hotels, motels, libraries, coffee shops, airports and never had a problem like this. I've had other issues: slow networks, Hotels/airports requiring you to open your browser and accept terms and agreements, etc..

Oh other thing may be DNS, look at your DNS config by clicking "Advanced" then click the DNS tab. You may be using a DNS from your home ISP which may not be accessible when on the road? Google has a pretty fast DNS server at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

 

[SurferMan]

So tried a few things yesterday, reset their network and went through to make sure all their stuff was untouched. Played with dns as I know Google and open, still didn't work but on the 3rd reset it did. What changed, got me?!?! Was just happy to get some work done. Have had Macs for years and no clue what causes this connectivity issue.

Odd thing is I've been up there plenty of times and this happens sometimes and other times not, I've opened the laptop and it immediately went online as it stored their network info, then other times its like wtf lol

Edit - at airport and it's fine, go figure