Lewis Luminos

This isn't SL related but I figured that someone here would know enough about the internet to explain it.

A few days ago, I was browsing the web and suddenly I couldn't look at any web pages at all. One minute it was fine, the next minute every web page I looked at was giving me 404 errors. Except my router reported a decent connection (better than average in fact) and everything else, including email, AIM and second life, were working fine. It was just web browsing. I tried different browsers. I tried re-booting both router and computer. Nothing worked. I gave up and went to bed.

The following morning everything was fine, and it was fine again for 3 more days.

Last night it started happening again, except it was just Google-based websites, and gmail had stopped working. It wasn't working for my partner either, and he suggested that maybe Google was under a DOS attack.

This morning I still can't get to google so I decide to go searching for news to see if that's what it is. But I can't get to any news sites either. No BBC, no Sky news, a handful of random tech blogs, nothing. Yahoo works (I can still use Yahoo search, but 99% of the search results don't work). SLU works, obviously, as does plurk, my blog provider, and a handful of forums I visit regularly. In fact the only pattern I can tell is that websites I've been using frequently over the past 3 days are all working fine, and ones I haven't been on before, or haven't been on for a few days, aren't working at all. Google remains my only regular website that doesn't work now.

My partner's computer is showing a few of the websites that I can't see, but not all of them. He's also failing to get some of the websites I CAN see. Again it seems to be his regular ones working fine, as far as I can tell.

Non-web internet access (mail, AIM etc) is still fine, except for g-mail. My other regular mail (gmx) is working.

My router is still reporting a good internet connection. I have tried the obvious, rebooting router and computers, but it hasn't helped.

Something like this happened to me a year or so ago, and I was never able to find the cause. At that time I phoned my ISP and they couldn't explain it either. That time, a friend talked me through using a proxy, and after 3 days of using the internet that way, everything was back to normal again.

Can anyone explain what is causing this and if there is anything I can do to fix it other than waiting and hoping it fixes itself?

(ETA: In a few hours I'll be able to report whether I can see any of these websites from work)

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Lewis Luminos

Update: Now I've got home and everything appears to be back to normal. One of my friends suggested "DNS routing issues" but I have no clue what that means.

In any case if anyone still has suggestions in case it happens again?

Just4yucks Miami

The fact that your recently visited sites worked and new ones did not definitely points a big accusing finger at DNS. Domain name cache can be set to last up to several days, which would explain why recently-visited sites are fine.

What exactly is causing your DNS issues is an open question though - it could be at your ISP, or could be higher up the chain at the backbone level. Call your ISP help desk if this keeps happening.

Edited to add:

BTW, DNS stands for Domain Name Services - this is what turns a human-readable domain name (Sluniverse.com) into a machine readable IP address (74.208.13.68). You're not getting to any websites without a working DNS installation - unless you happen to know IP address already.
(example: Try copying and pasting the IP address 74.208.13.68 into your browser - you end up at the Sluniverse home page)

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