None of my browsers will load!

[petrucci666]

My internet connection works because I'm using my WiFI on both my iPhone and iPad, it's just the browsers that aren't responding. Also, it works fine on my girlfriend's MBP running Lion.

Oddly enough, apps that use the Internet connection e.g. Twitter are working normally. I use Safari primarily but tested to see if it worked in Chrome and Firefox but no success. Also tried restarting the laptop several times, troubleshooting etc.

It just started out of the blue last night, it worked before that perfectly.

I'm on a base 13" Macbook Air running Lion.


Anyone know what else I could try?


Thanks!

 

[r0k]

My internet connection works because I'm using my WiFI on both my iPhone and iPad, it's just the browsers that aren't responding. Also, it works fine on my girlfriend's MBP running Lion.

Oddly enough, apps that use the Internet connection e.g. Twitter are working normally. I use Safari primarily but tested to see if it worked in Chrome and Safari but no success. Also tried restarting the laptop several times, troubleshooting etc.

It just started out of the blue last night, it worked before that perfectly.

I'm on a base 13" Macbook Air running Lion.


Anyone know what else I could try?


Thanks!

I assume the browsers open, it's just the pages don't load, right?

You mention other apps using the internet that work just fine. Is email working? Sometimes browser failure can be caused by intermittent dns service. Comcast is notorious for this. Sometimes their DNS is working but it's just s-l-o-w. DNS stands for domain name service and it takes care of turning something like yahoo.com into an ip address (209.191.122.70) so your browser knows where to get the web page from.

It could be that the dns settings on your ithings aren't the same as those for your computers hence the ithings work while the computer fails. Try using google's (8.8.8.8) or Opendns (208.67.222.222) or another free dns and see if your problems go away. Even if you know the ip for the site you are visiting, without dns the request can still time out as javascript and advertising gets loaded from sites for which you don't know the ip so when the web seems to have quit altogether but other things on the net appear to work, take a look at your dns.

 

[petrucci666]

Worked like a charm - thank you!


For anyone with a similar problem, I just went into System Preferences, Network, selected my WiFi connection in the left panel, Advanced in the lower right, DNS tab, 192.168.1.1 was already listed so I clicked the + sign on the bottom of the left panel, added the 2 DNS servers r0k gave me and voila - pages loaded up instantly!

 

[r0k]

You're welcome! Glad I was able to help.

 

[davidlv]

Best DNS for your setup

Worked like a charm - thank you!
For anyone with a similar problem, I just went into System Preferences, Network, selected my WiFi connection in the left panel, Advanced in the lower right, DNS tab, 192.168.1.1 was already listed so I clicked the + sign on the bottom of the left panel, added the 2 DNS servers r0k gave me and voila - pages loaded up instantly!

The Open DNS and Google servers do work, but they may not be the best for your location/setup. Try using the free utility Namebench to test and find the best DNS servers for you (have found these will change periodically, so I use the utility 2 or so times each year).
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32784/namebench
Be advised, this will take a while to run the tests, so do it when you have the time.