"Safari cannot connect to server" message, but refresh connects successfully

Question

"Safari cannot connect to server" message, but refresh connects successfully

Hi,

Quite a few times a day, I get the "Safari cannot connect to the server" error when I try to navigate to a webpage. Sometimes, the more detailed message indicates an actual problem at the website's side, but for most other cases, if I just click the "Refresh" icon in the URL input control, the page loads normally. This has me thinking that Safari might have some sort of "timeout" duration, and if the page hasn't loaded by the timeout, a connection failure page is displayed. If this is the case, is there any way that this timeout value can be adjusted? In my case, I'd like to make the timeout value a bit longer, to give Safari more time to wait for the page to load before reporting a connection error.

Thanks,

Ken

Mac mini, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jan 13, 2023 10:21 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Kenneth Hjulstrom Author

Level 2

473 points

Jan 15, 2023 8:19 AM in response to PRP_53

Thanks for the information, but it would seem to me that if any of the possible causes you listed existed, wouldn't the symptoms be that attempts to refresh the page would also fail? What I find odd about my situation is that more often than not, doing a page refresh results in the page loading normally.

Thanks,

Ken

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Answer 2

Jan 16, 2023 12:43 PM in response to PRP_53

HI P. Phillips,

I offer my apologies for not being more clear in my original post. Here is some additional details regarding what I am experiencing:

I get the "Cannot Connect" error across a number of websites, and not consistently for any particular website. By my rough estimation, I get the "Cannot Connect" message for about 3% - 5% of every website that I attempt to open. And of these, about 95% of the time, just doing a page refresh loads the very page that Safari claimed that it "Couldn't Connect" to.
I have found no website where getting the "Cannot Connect" is 100% or even more than 5% reproduceable, so I don't believe that it would be particularly helpful to post the URLs where I'm seeing this issue. I know that one of the sites is www.google.com, but I'm quite sure that the issue isn't on Google's side. This is an intermittent problem, which are the most difficult to solve, precisely because they cannot be reproduced reliably.
In my initial response to your list of possible causes, I appreciate your post, but upon checking each of the possible causes that you listed, it would appear to me that if any of those causes were present, my problem would be that I would never be able to access certain websites, and so far, in the situation I reported, I have yet to not be able to access a site by just doing a page refresh, unless the stated reason on the "Cannot Connect" page clearly stated another reason, such as "Remote site not responding".
Finally, although I appreciate all of the posts made here, my initial post didn't actually request a solution to my problem. To me, the apparent "randomness" of the problem could be due to Safari having some sort of timeout parameter that would be used to force a "Cannot Connect" error after a certain amount of time had passed without receiving any response from the remote webserver. So, assuming that there is such a timeout parameter, my aim in writing this post was to find out if a) such a timeout parameter existed; and b) if it did exist, how I would be able to access it and change its value.

Once again, I sincerely apologize for offending or upsetting anyone here.

Ken

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

210,777 points

Jan 15, 2023 9:57 AM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

You might change DNS servers. Go to the System/Network/Ethernet/Details/DNS settings pane.

There you will see the DNS servers.

Try changing them to the Open DNS servers:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

You do not need to join anything or pay anything. Just copy the addresses above and paste into the DNS Server pane.

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Answer 4

PRP_53

Level 10

92,275 points

Jan 14, 2023 1:53 AM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

A couple of possible culprits could be the cause of this issue

1 - The site is using only the Non Secure http versus the Secure https ?

2 - Any Safari Extension installed that are block Adverts or other like pesky things ?

3 - Any Third Party Security Software installed and used on this machine

4 - Is the computer connecting to Internet from behind a VPN Connection ?

5 - Is the computer connecting to the Internet over an Wifi Network connection ? Connecting over a 2.4 Ghz signal or a 5 Ghz signal.

6 - Is the computer connecting via an Ethernet cable directly to Router ?

7 - What Speed does your ISP Quote as the Connection Speed that the user is paying for ?

8 - Has the user attempted to perform a Speed Test to get a better idea of what one is paying for is actually delivered.

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Answer 5

PRP_53

Level 10

92,275 points

Jan 15, 2023 8:52 AM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

This will depend if this issue occurs on Every or Some websites

If the User would share links to the Some sites we can Test it out

Basically, on the 3 Machines I use - 2 with Ventura 13.1 and Safari 16.2 and 1 High Sierra macOS 10.13.6 and Safari 13.xx any website I surf to, works without the Requirements or Need to use the Reload to get the website to load.

Go figure

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Answer 6

Jan 15, 2023 3:40 PM in response to PRP_53

HI,

I'm not sure if the problem I'm seeing occurs on every website, but I do know that it never always occurs for any particular website. About 95% of the time, if I do a page reload, the page loads fine with no error messages. That's what made me initially think that Safari has some sort of timeout value that causes it to quit on loading a page if the delay was too long.

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Answer 7

PRP_53

Level 10

92,275 points

Jan 16, 2023 1:38 AM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

Well, as @OLd Toad has suggested above they that.

Or , provide Reproducible Evidence that can be actioned either by allow use to Test this issue with a link or links so we can confirm or refute this.

There has been sufficient advise offered, from more than 1 Contributor, for the User ( you ) to make an informed and educated choice what the next course of action is required for this computer.

The suggestions have been put forth on a volunteer basis, in good faith and in the best interests of the computer.

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Answer 8

Jan 16, 2023 1:05 PM in response to Old Toad

Hi Old Toad,

Thanks for this. I checked my DNS settings and I have the following:

71.243.0.12

68.237.161.12

both of which were associated with "Verizon Business", which makes sense, since I'm using Verizon Fios for my Internet connection, so these DNS values probably got onto my system when I first set it up. I'll switch to the OpenDNS values that you suggested to see if that improves things. I also noticed that I had "verizon.net" set as a "Search Domain", and I removed that, thinking that it might be conflicting with certain search parameters that I enter into the URL input control.

Thanks again,

Ken

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Answer 9

Jan 19, 2023 8:56 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

Hi Old Toad,

It's been a bit more than three days since I changed my Verizon Business DNS values to the OpenDNS values that you suggested, and I haven't encountered a single instance of "Safari Cannot Connect to Server", so for my case, anyway, it appears that your suggestion fixed my problem.

Thanks again,

Ken

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