Mac not handling DNS but a windows box on the same network is :(

Hi everyone,

So I'm sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai with my mac (running snow leopard) and unfortunately I'm using an instance of Windows XP running under VMWare Fusion to access the web. The windows instance is using bridged networking-so it has it's own IP address. I can access web pages without problems (other than using internet explorer makes me want to tear my hair out).

My mac does have an (non-self-assigned) IP address, and it seems to have two DNS servers listed - and I can ping them without any issues. As long as I use IP addresses I can even talk to things out on the network (I can ssh to a box that I have back in the states for example). And yet if I try to open a web page in Safari, I get "Safari can’t open the page “<url>” because your computer isn’t connected to the Internet.".

Two things to note: Network Diagnostics is showing green for "Network Status", "Network Settings", "ISP" - and red for "Internet" and "Server". Also, when I use the command line tool "nslookup" I can successfully lookup the IP address of a name. However the man-page of nslookup warns: "The nslookup command does not use the host name and address resolution or the DNS query routing mechanisms used by other processes running on Mac OS X.".

Any ideas would be appreciated, because this brief foray back into Windoze is making me queezy.

Thanks

Air and 15" MBP and iPhone 3GS, and an Apple TV, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 11, 2009 12:25 AM

19 replies

paulsorensen Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 15, 2009 7:21 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

I'm back in the US now—but I did try both Firefox and Safari and neither worked.

So again if Apple is watching - here's my thoughts: Mac OS/X was clever enough to know that something was wrong because Network Diagnostics was had a red flag against "Internet". So it should be relatively easy for try the options available to it. In this case for example if DHCP came back with two DNS servers - if one isn't working then "deactivate it".

Sep 15, 2009 7:23 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

No.

The Mac can't even PING the box, but again, XP and Ubuntu can reach it just fine.

Seems strange it would be a DNS issue, since it's an IP address, and its on the LAN, but, it's been like this for years.... kind of just gave up on it, but if someone has something else to try, I'd all for it.

paulsorensen Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 15, 2009 7:40 PM in response to Jeffrey Lee

Hi Jeffrey — very strange that you can't even ping it — as you say, it doesn't sound like a DNS issue since you can't ping it even with an IP address. Is the Mac on the same subnet as the audio box?

So if your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, then are the first three numbers in your IP addresses the same? For example your mac might be 192.168.1.50 and your audio box might be 192.168.1.100.

If they are then it still has to be something to do with the network routing on your network.

Sep 15, 2009 9:02 PM in response to paulsorensen

Defiantly the same Subnet= 255.255.255.0

Mac's IP address is 192.168.1.97, box's IP address is 192.168.1.93, both are static....

Interestingly enough, the Parallels Guest and Host IP's are on the 10.x range, but am not sure what the guest OS's IP's are.

We're using an ATT router... nothing really special about the way it's set up AFAIK....

(And just a thought, since I've got a 2nd ethernet port on the MacPro, what are the chances of setting it up and connecting the audio box directly to it? The audio box has a static IP, router, subnet, and DNS entries(for when it needs to look for updates) all entered manually, so I could easily change them. I wouldn't want to have to mess with plugging and unplugging anything or changing and re-setting things to get this to work, only to have to undo it all to get the MacPro to connect to the regular net.... but.. I'm willing to give anything a shot.)

Thanks for your help.

Message was edited by: Jeffrey Lee

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Mac not handling DNS but a windows box on the same network is :(