SaintAelphaba

So, I logged into the router of the one network which is actually working today and played with the DNS settings. Google's don't work. I gave techie the servers which were already there and he got a response from both of them but said sometimes the connection would just time out and wasn't very reliable. So... who knows. Need to contact ISP. I just learned how to do a trace route thingy, that was exciting and told me nothing!

I got so excited, it worked for the Kenya Airways website! But I think maybe it had just remembered the IP from when I typed it in earlier, as it didn't work for other sites. Just chatting to the ex-techie and he thinks he might be able to log in remotely to check the settings, as long as Telma haven't reset the routers (which they probably have). He can't do it at work so will have to wait until after the weekend! Thanks for all the help, no doubt I will be back here next week!

Since it affects both routers I guess it's more likely to be an ISP problem then, unless both routers were set up wrong...? Ugh. I don't think Telma will fix this, they're useless! OK, I've got "Network and Internet" and then don't have a "Manage Network Connections" option and can't find anything that leads me to that info. The closest I can get is the "Network Connection Details" for the network I'm currently connected to but doesn't have the info you mention. Actually, found it. Both are already set to "obtain automatically".

Hit a wall, I'm afraid. I can't save the file because I don't have permission and have to contact an administrator. I guess this is to do with the network and I don't have admin info (waiting on a response from our old techie). It will only let me save in My Documents which I think isn't right...? Tried on a couple of Windows 7 machines. We also have Linux and various Mac OSs if it would be easier/make a difference to do it off any of these. Thanks so much for your help.

# Copyright © 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. # # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. # # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one # space. # # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol. # # For example: # # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself. # 127.0.0.1 localhost # ::1 localhost The read only box wasn't checked so I changed it - the above copy and paste is from before I did that though, does that make a difference? One router is Netgear N600 WNDR3400. The other is ZyXEL P-334U. The problem is with all machines on both networks that we use.

Thanks for all the help so far. I appreciate it's not easy as I can't give you the information you need! I tried the Kenya Airways website using the IP address and it worked. What does that mean? I'll email our old guy this morning and hope he can pass on some useful information but he's in America so I probably won't get anywhere til after the weekend given the time differences. Many thanks everyone.

It's all wireless. My brain is completely fried right now but I'll attack the problem again when I'm in the office tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for the replies so far.

Sorry, my understanding isn't really good enough for even explaining the problem! We don't have a server. There are 3 different routers, so I'm guessing 3 different incoming lines... and on any computer you can pick which network you connect to, so the people who were using the one which is now broken are all using a different one. Does that help...? If more information is needed I can always email our tech support guy who left and I think he'd be able to provide the info or tell me how to find it.

I've spent the whole day googling this but can't get anywhere with it at all so I think it's time to ask for help! I'm way out of my depth and don't know what I'm looking for so apologies if this post is garbled and has too much/too little information. First of all, I'm in Madagascar so don't have great internet connection at the best of times. I'm in a small office and we usually have 3 networks (all from the same provider) but currently only 2 are working as one router is broken, so we're overloading them and things are slower than normal. Basically, some websites just don't load. On a Mac in Safari there are no error messages, just a page that never loads. On a PC in IE or Firefox you get a general error message, but Chrome says it's a DNS problem. I think this has been a problem since I arrived here 6 months ago as I've always had some websites that don't work in the office but will work at a local hotel, but it seems to be getting worse over the last couple of weeks. Copied from an email I sent earlier: So, Chrome helpfully tells me that the problem is because DNS lookup failed. It suggests: restarting the router (tried this - has no effect); checking the DNS settings (which I can do on individual computers but I don’t know what I’m looking for); changing a setting about predicting network actions which was the first thing I tried but that doesn’t work; checking Chrome is permitted by the firewall (clearly not the problem as it’s the same across all browsers/computers) checking proxy server settings if we’re using one – I don’t know what this means or whether we use one! Taking two websites as examples: trip advisor and Kenya Airways. trip advisor: On my Mac using Safari: will not load if the address is typed into the bar. Also will not load through Google. On PC using IE/Firefox/Chrome: as above. Kenya Airways: Mac: will not load through Google but will load if the address is typed in on my mac, but not on others. PC: will not load either way. I've been looking at websites and forums all day but can only find things about this happening on one computer and therefore changing that computer's settings. However, this is happening on everyone's computers, Mac and PC, old, new and somewhere in between, all browsers and both our networks. I literally have no idea what to do about this and there's no one here who can help since we lost our tech support guy a couple of months ago. It's making it really difficult to work as more and more websites are affected and obviously we rely a lot on the net for communication. Any ideas much appreciated (I'm not very tech-literate but can follow instructions and have a basic idea about most things...) as I'd really like to get this sorted. I don't feel like I've explained the problem very well so will obviously answer any questions as best I can. Many thanks.