# Randomly failing to load webpages?



## hat (May 12, 2011)

On my computer, Google Chrome, IE9 and Firefox 4 all randomly fail to load webpages. A few quick points:


This happens even on a fresh install of Windows (and on my previous install as well)
I thought it might have been my ISP's DNS server failing, so I switched to Google DNS and it still randomly fails
My router is a homemade machine featuring a 2GHz P4 Celeron, 256MB SDR memory, and a 512MB CF card as the hard drive running the generic x86 DD-WRT client
I've rebooted my modem/router many times and the problem persists
I am no longer using my surge protector to protect my modem, the coaxial cable runs straight from the wall to the modem

What should I do?


----------



## Dippyskoodlez (May 12, 2011)

Do the webpages fail to load when you are directly connected?

Also, with the normal network setup, can you ping an internet IP address (Google, or a ventrilo server or such), bypassing the DNS?

Break it down piece by piece and just eliminate working parts.

Is this the only computer on the network having issues? Double check your PC is getting the proper DNS too, roadrunner/Comcast DHCP likes to override gateway DNS settings when you acquire an IP.


----------



## hat (May 12, 2011)

Directly connected to the modem? I have no idea. I don't really use any of the other computers in my house, they're mostly sitting in the corner folding/crunching away without any mouse/kb setup. The only other one that has a mouse/kb/monitor is my mom's, which I rarely use, but I don't recall having this issue with it.

I switched to google dns like so:


----------



## W1zzard (May 12, 2011)

is it only certain sites that fail all the time? check the mtu on the router then


----------



## OneMoar (May 12, 2011)

you need to change the dns setting at the router level ..


----------



## W1zzard (May 12, 2011)

OneMoar said:


> you need to change the dns setting at the router level ..



not needed


----------



## hat (May 12, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> is it only certain sites that fail all the time? check the mtu on the router then



It seems to randomly fail everywhere... even here at tpu.

I noticed the MTU was set to Auto, so I manually set it to 1500.


----------



## W1zzard (May 12, 2011)

how long are the "outages" ?


----------



## freebie (May 12, 2011)

hat said:


> Directly connected to the modem? I have no idea. I don't really use any of the other computers in my house, they're mostly sitting in the corner folding/crunching away without any mouse/kb setup. The only other one that has a mouse/kb/monitor is my mom's, which I rarely use, but I don't recall having this issue with it.
> 
> I switched to google dns like so:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110512/Clipboard01.jpg



Have you tried letting DHCP give your machine the relevant addresses? Your DNS looks really bizarre!!!  

Once your on DHCP, run ipconfig through command line to check your dns, its normally the ip address of your router.


----------



## Dippyskoodlez (May 12, 2011)

freebie said:


> Have you tried letting DHCP give your machine the relevant addresses? Your DNS looks really bizarre!!!
> 
> Once your on DHCP, run ipconfig through command line to check your dns, its normally the ip address of your router.



That is google's open DNS. It is the correct IP address.

Definitely a good idea to just set the DNS at the router level, as I've found my linksys likes to ignore my machine settings  (Time warner DNS is terribad.)


----------



## OneMoar (May 12, 2011)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> That is google's open DNS. It is the correct IP address.
> 
> Definitely a good idea to just set the DNS at the router level, as I've found my linksys likes to ignore my machine settings  (Time warner DNS is terribad.)



yep I use opendns on a WNR3500l running ddwrt


----------



## hat (May 13, 2011)

It usually lasts for like a minute. Some pages I can load, other pages I can't.


----------



## Dippyskoodlez (May 13, 2011)

hat said:


> It usually lasts for like a minute. Some pages I can load, other pages I can't.



I just noticed you are in ohio, too. 

If it's time warner, make sure the DNS is set on whatever device is your gateway, and give opendns's 208.67.222.222 a try. i just recently started picking up google's since the secondary is easier to remember 

I have noted pretty much the exact same problem with time warner around Lima, you really have to work to purge their crappy DHCP DNS setting.


----------



## hat (May 13, 2011)

It's Armstrong Zoom Internet, not Time Warner.


----------



## OneMoar (May 13, 2011)

hat said:


> It's Armstrong Zoom Internet, not Time Warner.



same idea 
have you tried running a tracert during the time of outage to see where its breaking ?

cmd > tracert www.failingurlhere.com
do not use http://


----------



## hat (May 15, 2011)

The tracerts don't ever time out when I try it on a "broken" website.


----------



## Neuromancer (May 15, 2011)

See if you can swap in a cheap router to eliminate the PC as the problem. Had the exact samething happening at my Aunt's house when I was dog sitting last month.  Noticed the top of the router was brown (was a white router) swapped it out and all problems dissappeared.

You can also try reseting your modem, although it really sounds like the router.


----------



## hat (May 15, 2011)

I doubt it's the router. It's a box running the generic x86 version of DD-WRT. It's an old IBM IntelliStation E Pro with a 512MB CF card as the hard drive, 1x256MB SDRAM, and a 2GHz P4 celeron. It's the only one I have that works (properly). With my Netgear router I can't connect to most BC2 servers (apparently this is a common issue with Netgear routers), and with another oddball wired router I have around here, I get horrible lag when I connect to my Alien Swarm server over LAN. I have rebooted the modem and router many times through this process, so I doubt it's that...

Could it possibly be some software I have installed? A service I disabled (using Black Viper's Windows 7 "Tweaked" config)?


----------



## Neuromancer (May 15, 2011)

Well as long as you tried another router.  I have 'doubted it was' stuff too, always helps to be thorough 

Yeah it could be the blackviper guide.


----------



## hat (May 15, 2011)

Neuromancer said:


> Well as long as you tried another router.  I have 'doubted it was' stuff too, always helps to be thorough
> 
> Yeah it could be the blackviper guide.



Any ideas on what service(s) specifically could make it do that? I doubt it's the guide as well, since with a service it's either on or off, you'd think it would either always fail or always work.

My guess is something randomly fails to resolve a DNS name somewhere along the line... and that could be anything, right? If something breaks along one of the hops, it doesn't necessarily mean it's my network.


----------



## westom (May 16, 2011)

hat said:


> My guess is something randomly fails to resolve a DNS name somewhere along the line... and that could be anything, right? If something breaks along one of the hops, it doesn't necessarily mean it's my network.


  Do some simple tests to first learn what you have.  For example, load the Command Prompt.  Then enter the command:
PING  xxxx 
where xxxs is the web site URL.  Ping will do two things.  First go to DNS to obtain an IP address.  Then attempt to connect to that IP address.

  If your DNS is not operating, then PING will not be able to resolved that address.

  You can also ping yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy 
where yyy are the numbers for an IP address.  Then ping need not talk to a DNS.  Instead ping only tried to access that site.

  These test report what you actually have without speculation.  Provide what you discover here to learn more; learn what to do next.


----------



## hat (May 16, 2011)

I've tried that too. I did ping -n 50 google.com for example, worked every time. The problem is too intermittent and goes away too quickly for those command prompt tests to work I think.


----------



## BinaryMage (May 16, 2011)

Try running your computer off of an Ubuntu LiveCD and see if you still experience the problem. If you do, your router is the issue, or your physical connection (unlikely). If not, your OS/settings is/are at fault.


----------



## hat (May 16, 2011)

Well, I put my Netgear router back in place, we'll see what happens...


----------



## westom (May 16, 2011)

hat said:


> I did ping -n 50 google.com for example, worked every time. The problem is too intermittent and goes away too quickly ...


  No, it doesn't.  If the DNS is not accessed, then ping will always complain.  DNS need only be good once.  Then the information is stored in a system cache.  If DNS does not work, ping will not work.  If DNS works once, then your computer has an IP address and does not have DNS problems.

  Many reasons exist for browsers to not load web pages.  If ping does have an IP address for that web page, then your loss of connection is not due to DNS.  Move on to other suspects.

  What would installing a Netgear router accomplish?  Do that only because you expect to identify a specific problem.  Otherwise you are doing that because you have no idea what else to do.

  You have a web page that does not load.  Good.  Execute this:
PING -t  xxxxx
  Now, when the web page at xxxxx does not work, does ping also stop working?

  Appreciate the difference of your approach vs mine.  I am not just randomly changing things on wild speculation.  I am starting analysis at the lowest layers of the internet. Slowly confirming what does and does not work. Doing what some call "Follow the evidence".


----------



## hat (May 16, 2011)

Well, I guess its not the DNS then, because I can load a site, then it will randomly fail to load, then randomly start working again, all on the same site.


----------



## westom (May 16, 2011)

hat said:


> Well, I guess its not the DNS then, because I can load a site, then it will randomly fail to load, then randomly start working again, all on the same site.


  So what does ping -t xxxx report when that happens.

  Another test for other functions.  Ping has provided the IP address (yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy) for that web site. Instead of entering the URL in any browser, enter the IP address.  Does that connect every time?

  I suspect it does same due to symptoms you have reported.  Once the browser has that IP address, then it only accessed the web site using that web site.  But do it anyway to eliminate other suspects.

  With confirmation from those tests, then move on to other suspects.  IOW, "follow the evidence".


----------



## hat (May 17, 2011)

Since I moved to the Netgear router, I have yet to fail to load a webpage (odd, I don't remember always having this issue with my DD-WRT box). Next time it fails, I'll try ping. I have yet to have ping fail to resolve the DNS, though.

I just remembered that if I follow a link that takes me to the failed to load page, I can try refreshing the page all day and it will fail every time. I have to go back to the page that had the link, and click on the link again for it to work.


----------



## Neuromancer (May 17, 2011)

Glad you got it sorted hat.  I had the same issue recently and it was the router 

In fact it was a netgear router that had burned up  

(white casing turned brown lol)

Now you have the joy of figuring out the fail point on your scratch built router   I dont envy that.  Could be a card, could be a software...yuck. If you do eliminate the issue, please keep us posted


----------



## hat (May 17, 2011)

I haven't decided to say the issue is completely scrapped, just that it looks that way. I'll give it a week or so, and if I see the kind of shit I've been seeing, then I'll have to figure something else out.


----------



## westom (May 17, 2011)

hat said:


> I haven't decided to say the issue is completely scrapped, just that it looks that way.


 What is your Internet connection?  Does this router connect directly to your Internet connection?  Or does it connect via a modem?


----------



## hat (May 17, 2011)

Cable over coaxial from wall -> Motorola Surfboard provided by ISP -> Netgear Router -> machines on network


----------



## westom (May 18, 2011)

hat said:


> Cable over coaxial from wall -> Motorola Surfboard provided by ISP -> Netgear Router -> machines on network


  Ok.  So the Motorola Surfboard is the modem.  It could be configures as a bridge or as a router. The Motorola is another important variable.  And lights both on the Motorola and the router - especially lights that discuss the connection from router to Motorola and from Motorola to ISP are important facts.

  Another important and relevant fact is a S/N ratio or Signal strength number (in dBs) for the Motorola to ISP connection.  Unfortunately most DOCSIS modems do not provide that all so useful number.  You might get lucky.  But I am not familiar with that particular model.  maybe someone else can say more.


----------



## Neuromancer (May 18, 2011)

westom said:


> Ok.  So the Motorola Surfboard is the modem.  It could be configures as a bridge or as a router. The Motorola is another important variable.  And lights both on the Motorola and the router - especially lights that discuss the connection from router to Motorola and from Motorola to ISP are important facts.
> 
> Another important and relevant fact is a S/N ratio or Signal strength number (in dBs) for the Motorola to ISP connection.  Unfortunately most DOCSIS modems do not provide that all so useful number.  You might get lucky.  But I am not familiar with that particular model.  maybe someone else can say more.



You can usually access the modem information via your browser.

Motorola usually uses 192.168.100.1 (at least lately)

I doubt that is the issue though as any modem I have checked has been at or outside the limits of what is supposed to work in S/N ratio, and they still work just fine. I think that the information I can find on the web about what is "acceptable" may be wrong or outdated.


----------



## hat (May 18, 2011)

Pretty sure it was the router, the netgear one is working fine. Haven't failed to load a webpage yet.


----------



## westom (May 18, 2011)

hat said:


> Pretty sure it was the router, the netgear one is working fine. Haven't failed to load a webpage yet.


  More important is to learn from the experience.  Obtaining those numbers from the modem when things are working is another example of why we fix things ourself.  Learn now when numbers are good, the task is easy, and understood.

 Then if the failure mysteriously returns, it is not so mysterious.


----------



## qubit (May 18, 2011)

hat said:


> Pretty sure it was the router, the netgear one is working fine. Haven't failed to load a webpage yet.



Yep, it sure does sound like it. I read the whole thread before posting this and it seemed early on like it could be that old Celery of yours. I've seen network cards fail in creative (read: infuriating, intermittent and oblique) ways and I reckon it's the onboard NIC doing this.

If you want to troubleshoot that Celery, may I suggest the following:

Once you have run with the Netgear for a while, switch to the Celery and run it as it was. It should start failing intermittently (heck, you could try to induce it by wiggling the network cable at the socket - and check the network cable isn't intermittent, either...). Once you see it do this a couple of times, put in a PCI network card and see how it goes.

I'll bet money the problem disappears. 

Let us know how you get on.  I'll keep the sub for this thread open.

EDIT: I've just realised that you've got a CF card in there instead of a HD. This will be a prime suspect, due to the limited lifetime of flash memory.

I had one of these in an IPCop box and after a few months, the Linux kernel would start crashing horribly or do strange things. Reinstalling from the CD would cure it temporarily, but it gradually grew worse and worse. Problem disappeared once I put a hard disc back in there.

So, once again, try the Celery as is. Now, once it starts failing, swap the CF card for a HD and see how it goes. If still bad, leave the HD in there, but this time fit a network card.


----------



## hat (May 18, 2011)

I ran well with the netgear router for a while, except not being able to connect to BC2 servers (I had another thread about this issue with no dice). Then it occurred to me that I had switched the LAN/WAN devices around... I typically used the onboard for WAN, and the network card for LAN, but I switched them around in a test. I switched them back and I'm still having the issue (randomly failed to load this site just before I posted this).

I don't know about the CF card dying... you'd think if a data block died, it wouldn't work at all, not just randomly fail to load webpages sometimes.

Well, I don't want to use my netgear router because it fails with BC2, but it doesn't fail to load webpages like my DD-WRT router does... man, what the shit?


----------



## Neuromancer (May 18, 2011)

(WAN/LAN on desktop PC or the celeron router PC?)

Either way, sounds like you have a bad onboard NIC for whatever machine you are talking about


----------



## hat (May 18, 2011)

The router. It worked fine when I used my netgear router (except in BC2, which works fine with my DD-WRT router), but no matter if I use the onboard nic or the lan card was my WAN port it still fails to load webpages randomly.


----------



## caleb (May 18, 2011)

packetloss

run -> ping -t your.bridging.to.isp.router.ip.here

and watch if it looses any


----------



## hat (May 18, 2011)

Wow, I re-wrote dd-wrt to the cf card with physdiskwrite and somehow it remembered my configuration... if I fail to load webpages again, I'm probably going to re-write it again, but after I write zeros to the drive.


----------



## hat (May 18, 2011)

Still failed to load webpages. I thought it might be good to try a different router software... running monowall instead of dd-wrt now.

It's working so far, but even if it does work I don't want this to be a permanent solution. Does anyone know of any other router software that would have the "gamer" dmz function, as is typically found in consumer routers?


----------



## hat (May 21, 2011)

Have yet to fail with monowall, will probably try reinstalling dd-wrt sometime soon.


----------



## qubit (May 21, 2011)

hat said:


> Have yet to fail with monowall, will probably try reinstalling dd-wrt sometime soon.



That's great it's working. So are you running this on the exact same hardware then? I'm thinking network card and CF card in particular.

You may also like IPCop or Astaro. 

www.ipcop.org

www.astaro.com (use the free home use version)


----------



## hat (May 21, 2011)

Yeah, same exact hardware.


----------



## hat (May 21, 2011)

Back to DD-WRT... somehow, even after using diskpart to "clean" the partition before installing monowall, then using diskpart to clean again before re-installing DD-WRT, iy _still_ managed to remember my configuration! I don't take this is a good sign... I'll probably be failing to load webpages again soon.

-ed: wrote zeros to the drive with WinDLG, didn't remember my settings after that. I failed to load the main forum page here once already, but the home page was also being pretty slow... maybe the server crapped out on me?


----------



## westom (May 21, 2011)

hat said:


> I don't take this is a good sign... I'll probably be failing to load webpages again soon.


This time you have tools to determine what causes a problem or at which network level your problem resides.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

So I'm failing to load webpages again with DD-WRT. Guess DD-WRT is crap for some reason now... it didn't always do this.


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

hat said:


> So I'm failing to load webpages again with DD-WRT. Guess DD-WRT is crap for some reason now... it didn't always do this.



I think it's time you swapped out that CF card and network card for troubleshooting, like I advised a while back. The CF card especially, as it's likely have something to do with the DD-WRT mysteriously "remembering" your configuration when there's no possible way it can do this. It might happen if the sectors won't erase properly, because it's faulty.

Remember, these things have a very limited life and can start failing unpredictably, like I found out when I experimented with one.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

monowall worked though... unless it avoid the bad sectors that DD-WRT somehow managed to write to twice... but once it gets loaded it's in memory and it doesn't use the hard drive anymore if I remember right.

Would something like this be more durable than a cf card?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Transcend-IDE-F...ge_Internal&hash=item4aab0c913d#ht_500wt_1156


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

hat said:


> monowall worked though... unless it avoid the bad sectors that DD-WRT somehow managed to write to twice... but once it gets loaded it's in memory and it doesn't use the hard drive anymore if I remember right.
> 
> Would something like this be more durable than a cf card?
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/Transcend-IDE-F...ge_Internal&hash=item4aab0c913d#ht_500wt_1156



Yeah, the bad sectors would tend to show up on DD-WRT more because, like all this type of software, it formats the hard disc (CF card here) and places the same files in physically the same place on it every time. It's a pure lottery that monowall happened to work ok. Over time, it will fail too, as it writes to the CF card and more sectors fail.

As far as that CF special you've found on eBay, I dunno, I've never seen one. However, the fact it uses ECC error correction gives one hope for greater reliability. It will still fail over time though and I recommened getting an old IDE HD and just using that.

Heck, it's a shame we live so far apart: I'd be happy to send you that duff CF card and let you play with it, to see how they are when they fail. It's a 4GB one and I didn't have the heart to throw it away, lol.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

It's impossible to use a hard drive in the case's current state... I would need to drill holes to mount it. That's why IDE flash modules and CF cards are so appealing to me: they plug right in the slot and don't move... doesn't need mounting. That's why I was asking if the IDE flash module is more durable/has more reliability.


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

hat said:


> It's impossible to use a hard drive in the case's current state... I would need to drill holes to mount it. That's why IDE flash modules and CF cards are so appealing to me: they plug right in the slot and don't move... doesn't need mounting. That's why I was asking if the IDE flash module is more durable/has more reliability.



Hmmm... that sounds like quite a limitation with the case. I can see your dilemma. Well, that flash drive you saw on eBay sounds like it's worth trying.

While the lifetime is limited, it certainly won't start giving grief straight away and you may well get a year or so worth of usage out of it. For such a small sum, I say go for it. 

Oh and seriously, try out Astaro and IPCop to get a feel for the competition. Astaro in particular, is a professional grade firewall, with features as long as your arm and it fully supports IPv6.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

I would like to avoid having this problem in the future though...

For the record, this router isn't about features. It's about performance and reliability. Typical user-grade routers don't have enough grunt for my network (hosting 2 game servers, torrenting, and gaming myself will lag... and not because of bandwidth limitations either), and I've had too many typical storebought routers die on me, or not work in very strange ways.


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

Unfortunately, it's not possible to avoid this with SSDs. They're inherently less reliable long term than hard discs, which sounds kinda weird, doesn't it? But it's true.

IPCop and Astaro can both handle anything you throw at them. Both are based on hardened and customized Linux distributions and are very reliable.

I've been using IPCop for the last decade and it has never let me down. Whenever I had networking problems, it was never that.

It's blown away by the extra functionality of Astaro, but otherwise, I actually prefer it.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

I want a simple, slim router though, not something loaded with features I'll never use.

I had a wonderful idea: Use a spare USB drive with DD-WRT! Then, it rebooted itself endlessly. I then found out that only the paid-for edition has support for that. In which case, I decided to try downloading the full version from them (apparently it needs activated somewhere along the line, but I wanted to see if it would at least boot) and it didn't. It just reboots itself endlessly.

//found a spare hard drive, probably am just going to go with that and drill holes later.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

I'm seeing signs of failure... I recall switching the LAN/WAN cards around... I typically used onboard for WAN, and a separate network card for LAN. I switched them around at one point so the separate LAN card was WAN, and the onboard was LAN... then I thought maybe that was the cause of this issue, so I switched it around again back to the way it was before. That didn't solve the issue, and I've been going around in circles ever since... I don't get why DD-WRT would randomly crap out on me like this... monowall worked fine when I used it as a test just recently.


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

Have you tried that hard disc yet? Until you do you're wasting your time. I explained how the CF defects will screw up the software.

If it still goes funny with the HD, then use two _different_ network cards than before. Replacing suspect components is the only way to troubleshoot. My money is on that CF being the cause though.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

Yes, I did, back in post 57. Why would faulty network cards screw up on dd-wrt, but not monowall?


----------



## qubit (May 22, 2011)

hat said:


> Yes, I did, back in post 57. Why would faulty network cards screw up on dd-wrt, but not monowall?



Ok, but that wasn't clear. At that point you'd found it, but you didn't post later that you'd tried it, so one couldn't tell.

Of course, faulty network cards would screw up with both software. However, if they're intermittent, they may have played nice while you had monowall on there. Now it's time to try two other network cards and see how it goes.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's some flaw in dd-wrt that's being exposed by your usage in some way?


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

Possibly... it's a "generic x86" platform. Makes me think they quickly chucked it out to get it running on this platform. Hasn't been updated since 2008. Typically you run it on consumer routers, not x86 computers.


----------



## hat (May 22, 2011)

fgsfds

bought a linksys e1000


----------



## hat (May 24, 2011)

Hmm, this thing isn't so bad. Apparently it's got a 300MHz processor and 32MB RAM.

//so apparently I'm still randomly failing to load webpages, even with the new Linksys router. I guess that wasn't the problem. I also replaced the WAN cable from the one I had with the one that came with the router, and I installed the actual Realtek drivers for my onboard LAN, rather than the ones Microsoft bundled with Windows 7.


----------

