Weird Internet Problem

[Ham4592]

We’re located on an island in Lake of the Woods, Ont. Canada. I use an Mac Air with the latest OS while my wife uses an HP with Windows 7. We have a satellite internet connection through Xplornet, a Canadian based satellite service that is offered through the Hughes Network. We’ve had this service for the last several years and had no problems until now. However, for the last several weeks we’ve been finding it impossible to connect to any web site that requires a password such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, any banks or brokerage houses that we normally connect with. We are able to connect easily and quickly with sites that do not require a password such as Bloomberg or various newspapers.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with the Xplornet techs and they say the signal to our satellite receiver is strong. Therefore they thought the problem might lie with the modem connected to the receiver.

Thinking that might be the problem I’ve gone over to my neighbors and used his internet service. (He’s on the island next to me which is about ⅛ to ¼ mile away. He uses a internet service provided by the local cell phone provider that uses a modem “Rogers Rocket Hub” modem which indicates it is manufactured by NetComm. I had no difficultly at all using his system. I borrowed his equipment and hooked it up at my place. However, the same problem persists that I’ve had with the satellite service. I tried switching Ethernet cables and connecting directly to both the satellite modem and the cell modem but that has no effect either.

We weren’t having this problem in May with the satellite as it has only developed in the past few weeks. Our weather up here has been unusual in that we’ve had SE winds almost every day (prevailing wind is W or N) plus overcast skies for serveral weeks and lots of rain.

What puzzles me the most about this is the ability to get some internet service but secured web sites. I do get full service at my neighbors but not at my place under the same weather conditions but not at my place (His cabin faces South while mine faces East)

Has anyone else ever had this kind of a problem and been able to figure out why? Or some idea why this might be happening?

 

[Shrink]

Only those living on isolated islands need reply!

 

[Meister]

Banks, email providers and others might block their service for certain carriers, usually satelite and sometimes cellular.

For example paypal blocks payments made from my ipad lte connection, but not wifi.

The phone support of these companies does not admit this, but I have a lot of experience and they do this!

That might be the problem.

 

[Darth.Titan]

When you borrowed your neighbor's "equipment" and hooked it up at your place, was it his internet connection equipment, or his computer? I understood that you borrowed his "Rogers Rocket Hub" and hooked your Macbook to it. If that is in fact the case:

On your internet connection using your Mac, you're having issues with authenticated sites.
On your neighbor's internet connection using your neighbor's computer, no problems.
On your neighbor's internet connection using your Mac, no authenticated sites.

It sounds like the issue is in the settings on your Mac somewhere. Have you checked your cookie settings? Authenticated sites usually have to use cookies to verify access. Also, you could try downloading an alternate browser to see if issues persist.

I apologize if I misunderstood your troubleshooting steps so far.

 

[Ham4592]

When you borrowed your neighbor's "equipment" and hooked it up at your place, was it his internet connection equipment, or his computer? I understood that you borrowed his "Rogers Rocket Hub" and hooked your Macbook to it. If that is in fact the case:

On your internet connection using your Mac, you're having issues with authenticated sites.
On your neighbor's internet connection using your neighbor's computer, no problems.
On your neighbor's internet connection using your Mac, no authenticated sites.

It sounds like the issue is in the settings on your Mac somewhere. Have you checked your cookie settings? Authenticated sites usually have to use cookies to verify access. Also, you could try downloading an alternate browser to see if issues persist.

I apologize if I misunderstood your troubleshooting steps so far.

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my problem. Thanks

Using the Mac at my neighbors place and his WiFi I have no problem connecting. It's only at my place the problem occurs. This would seem to eliminate the cookie issue.

Same problem exists with Chrome on the Mac and on the Windows 7 machine. Did not exist earlier this year. There haven't been any changes to either computer or any firmware updates to my router. To the best of my knowledge there haven't been any on the satellite modem either. Furthermore, the fact that the same problem exists when I use my neighbors internet modem/router at my place would seem to eliminate changes to the satellite modem or my router.