I can ping but not browse -- not a DNS problem

There seems to be an issue with Snow Leopard and some wireless routers. Seems that Snow Leopard is "stricter" than previous versions about following the wireless standard, resulting in issues. These people often report a Leopard machine, or a Windows PC or even Windows running from a Mac will work, but the Snow Leopard machine will have issues like you describe.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10331876-263.html
A CNET article above.

Below some other discussions. One of them is very long and the CNET article covers many of the topics in the long discussion. No firm conclusion. Trying the various things works for some people, but no one thing or one type of router is to blame so far. But you can see people reporting success with some suggestions.

There is a long discussion of similar issues at a couple other threads:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2142725
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2286188
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2140025

So 'Allow all incoming' does not fix things? Little Snitch should be all right unless you have customised your browser in it.
The only other thing is to move your particular connection (airport?) to the top of the sidebar in Network dialog, to give it priority.
Apart from that, the poster ctmurray seems to have tracked a buginess about this in 10.6.

For what is is worth, you could submit this defect to,

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Message was edited by: roam

It doesn't sound like it's a warranty-related defect per se, but if you're still under warranty or AppleCare I'm sure the people at the Genius Bar of your local Apple Store or other Apple retailer (it doesn't look like Melbourne has an Apple Store of yet) would be happy to help you out.

Hi adamgx.
I have exactly the same problem.
ping works in local network (ethernet 100 mbps) and to Internet hosts, dns requests works (tested with nslookup) but telenting google for example gives em timeout. I checked connection status with netstat and looks like the TCP conection does not receive the SYN ACK from the host i try to connect to. Therefore the connection timeouts after being there in SYN_SENT state for about 1 minute and 15 seconds.
I checked my ethernet cable and also uncplugged it to test this issue with connected via wireless (WPA2-PSK).
I have a windows xp sp2 machine too that has access to LAN and internet using the same ethernet cable and/or wireless connection used during testing.
I can´t reach (connect to) a Apache web server running in the same subnet.
Routing is not an issue. Default route is set up to router´s ip.

Logs doesn't show useful information about this issue.

Looks like a MacOSX 1.5.8 networking module issue to me.

Hello adamgx,

I know what was my problem. It's a firewall misconfiguration, mostly my fault.
noobproof ( http://www.hanynet.com/noobproof/) configured MacOSX's firewall to deny incomming TCP traffic, and when I tried to allow traffic (Allow all incomming connections) from Default Firewall configuration panel the rules where continue active.
I solved it giving default configuration to the firewall using noobproof and now networking is good again.
You should enable Firewall debug (Security -> Firewall -> Set Access to specific... -> Advanced -> Enable Firewall logging) and then click on Allow all incoming connections.
After that take a loot at /var/log/appfirewall.log to see if there're some Deny TCP logs.
You can check current rules using the following command: sudo ipfw list
My current output is:
65535 allow ip from any to any

Which allows pretty much everything.

Let me know if this works for you too.

Cheers

Humber

I'm having this problem as well. 10.6.2. Ethernet works, wifi has trouble getting an IP address and then when it does, no web applications EXCEPT for Ping work. no firewall, deleted wifi .pref's, reset the System Management Controller (SMC), added annd removed the airport, repaired permissions, hard-reset router. My husband's mac book pro works fine via wifi on the same network. I'm stumped..

To recap, its not:
1. the routert
2. the dns
3. network preferences
4. file permissions
5. firewall
6. SMC

Furthermore, no changes were made prior to the problem -- it just Stopped Working.

Help?!

Hi Adam,

That's good news. You're near the source of the problem 😉
Could you try 'sudo lsof -n -i TCP' to check the process that is creating too many tcp connections.
After identified it you could try to TERM it (kill PID ) or KILL it (kill -9 PID) to see if the networking situations improves (number of socket connections and network connectivity).

Let us know how everything is going. 😀

Regards,

Humber

Hi Adam,

Glad to know that your problem is solved. 😀

But you're right about OpenBase. It's there for a reason (at least most of the time hehe)
Extracted from Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBase):
"OpenBase SQL is a relational database server software, originally developed for the OpenStep platform. First released in 1991, OpenBase is available today for several platforms, although the bulk of its users are on Mac OS X. The system supports common access methods via JDBC and C, however it is optimized for use in conjunction with a variety of Macintosh-based development tools like WebObjects, RealBasic and Omnis Studio. It is also used on home computers for sharing features such as Windows file sharing."

Perhaps Windows file sharing won't work as expected :S. Not sure about it.

Best regards!

Humber