Can ping but cannot load site

Question

Level 1

100 points

Can ping but cannot load site

Hello,

I have a site a site that will not load in Safari or Firefox (I just get an error that the server is not responding).

I can ping the site in terminal just fine and get 0 packet loss. I can also connect to the site with FTP and can upload files.

What can cause this?

Macbook Core 2 Duo: 2.0 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 120gb hdd/2gb ram

Posted on Mar 30, 2008 10:01 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 30, 2008 10:52 AM in response to skeelo221

What can cause this? Too many things to list, with so little information.

Are you sure there is a web server running on your target? Are other computers able to access the site? Are you sure you have the correct URL for the site?

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Answer 2

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Mar 30, 2008 10:59 AM in response to tele_player

Yes other computers can access (including mine until a few days ago).

There is a server and I'm sure I have the correct URL present by the fact that I get an answer when I ping and can also connect to the server via FTP (using FUGU) and can upload and download files.

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Answer 3

Mar 30, 2008 11:19 AM in response to skeelo221

Being able to ping and FTP to an address does not prove that there is a WEB server at that address.

Other than that site, does web browsing appear to work normally on your Mac?

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Answer 4

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Mar 30, 2008 11:21 AM in response to tele_player

tele_player wrote:
Other than that site, does web browsing appear to work normally on your Mac?

Yes, completely normal.

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Answer 5

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Mar 30, 2008 11:45 AM in response to skeelo221

Do you need the site to troubleshoot?

I tried to PM it to you - did they take away that functionality here?

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Answer 6

Mar 30, 2008 12:25 PM in response to skeelo221

I'd try the site, but there's no PM here. You can probably guess my gmail email, if you leave out the underscore.

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Answer 7

jdelima

Level 3

515 points

Mar 31, 2008 11:33 PM in response to skeelo221

Open a terminal and telnet to the site on port 80 or 443 (if it's ssl) That'll tell you if there's a web server there. Empty Safari cache just as a precaution too.

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Answer 8

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Apr 1, 2008 7:03 AM in response to jdelima

Here's the site - we don't serve indexes so you will probably get the friendly splash screen my brother put up...

telnet keiners.com [80]
Trying 74.54.160.103...
telnet: connect to address 74.54.160.103: Can't assign requested address
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

Got the same [443] and by leaving the port designation off I got:
telnet: connect to address 74.54.160.103: Operation timed out
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

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Answer 9

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Apr 1, 2008 7:24 AM in response to skeelo221

Server is linux running apache by the way.

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Answer 10

leaflord

Level 1

0 points

Apr 1, 2008 7:30 AM in response to skeelo221

Hi,

I am having a similar problem accessing yahoo mail.

In order to remedy it I even download the patch for Airport but it didn't work.

Does anyone have any idea what to do?

I am getting the log in page and after entering the id and password, it would go to next page but never loads it and gives me timeout error.

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Answer 11

jdelima

Level 3

515 points

Apr 3, 2008 4:46 PM in response to skeelo221

Works from a Windows box. Nice message...

HTTP and HTTPS both respond. CentOS with Apache?

Telnetting into HTTP is interesting... It doesn't just break when i issue a bad command but spews a fair bit of info out. Pics online there from Europe in 2005 and Fall 2007 among other stuff? There isn't a HTTPS site setup, though it responds to tell me that it has the potnetial for it.

The "can't assign requested address" error you get is interesting. Can you traceroute to it and see what you get? Where phyically and topographically are you and server located? The obvious question is "what's changed since you could last connect on either server or Mac side?". Routing or port binding issue?

I don't have a Mac with me to test with right now. If i remember to have a crack at it when I'm back on the Mac I'll let you know how i go.

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Answer 12

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Apr 3, 2008 7:33 PM in response to jdelima

Thanks for taking a look. It works fine from my windows box at work - and now, it magically works for me here at home on my Mac!

Very strange - it appears to be an issue with the Apache server and my Airport Extreme?

Strange.

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Answer 13

Apr 3, 2008 9:50 PM in response to jdelima

That's what's good about telnet'ing to port 80. If the HTTP server is alive, it will return obvious HTTP responses, even if the site is misconfigured or the request is malformed, and it completely takes the browser out of the discussion.

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Answer 14

skeelo221 Author

Level 1

100 points

Apr 3, 2008 9:55 PM in response to tele_player

I don't think I'm using the correct notation to telnet. I did an info telnet but I'm still getting strange responses when I use, for example:

telnet [google.com [80]]

note: the 80 has [] around it.

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Answer 15

Apr 3, 2008 11:16 PM in response to skeelo221

The most basic HTTP command you can send is GET, so you'd do:

telnet google.com 80

(If a server is listening on port 80, then telnet will indicated it's connected, and display the escape character.)

then enter:

get

followed by the enter key - you'll get an error response from the HTTP server.

In order to get non-error responses from most modern HTTP servers, you'd need to enter a more complete GET command. Typically, you'd need the URL, the HTTP version, and the Host: directive to select from different sites hosted at the same IP (virtual servers)

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