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Level 1

13 points

Connected to Internet But Can't Browse?

This is weird. Rebooted my Macbook Pro yesterday after having it on for two weeks, as an update had to be installed. The update went fine, no dramas, however after waking up my Mac this morning after putting it to sleep overnight (as I normally do), I find that I can't browse the web in Safari, Chrome or Firefox (they all return server not found or something equivilant). The weird thing is that I can telnet any web server I want and issue a basic GET request, and pulls down all the HTML for that page without problem. So it's not anything to do with DNS, firewalls, or my network. It also happens over both a wired and wireless connection.

I anticipate that a reboot will fix it, but before I do that, I was hoping to see if I could find a way to solve this without a reboot, as a reboot can be a bit of a hassle after I've loaded everything and set up my workspace.

Has anyone seen this before, and/or have any ideas?

Macbook Pro 13, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Dell U2410 LCD Monitor

Posted on Apr 24, 2011 5:34 PM

Best reply

Wardrop19 Author

Level 1

13 points

Posted on Jul 18, 2011 3:32 AM

Motivated by the regulatory of this problem (about once a fortnight), I managed to find a fix for it. I found force quitting mDNSResponder in activity monitor, and letting the daemon restart automatically fixes the problem. I can only conclude that there's some kind of issue with the mDNSResponder daemon that causes it to either stop responding to DNS request, or fails to lookup DNS records.

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25 replies

Alivahur

Level 1

9 points

Aug 11, 2013 2:02 AM in response to rgvapple

Hi,

Load up Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and type the following.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

To turn it back on, just do the opposite:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Hope that helps

bkkrocks

Level 1

4 points

Jun 21, 2014 3:33 AM in response to Wardrop19

I could just HUG you for your answer! Why? Because as you can imagine, I've been pulling out what little hair I have left and wasting so many hours trying to figure out WHY I could connect to the web wirelessly with my iPad, my iPhone, my MacBook Air, with FileZilla, Dropbox, etc. but NOT with any of my browsers! It was driving me crazy. Thankfully, I tried YOUR solution and it worked immediately. I've been online now for about 3 hours and I hope the old problem won't come back. If it does, I guess I'll try your solution again and again. Since you wrote your answer back in 2011, have you learned anything more about the problem?

Whether you see this comment or not, THANK YOU for providing a solution that seems to be working for me!

bkkrocks

Level 1

4 points

Jun 21, 2014 6:18 AM in response to Wardrop19

Unfortunately, about an hour after I posted my comment, I again lost my browser's ability. to surf the web. :-(

i tried your suggestion again but to no avail. :-(

SIgh....

Guess I'll continue searching for a solution...

Jul 7, 2014 10:08 AM in response to Wardrop19

Guys , I was finally able to fix this !!

Just match the DNS from the wired connection and make sure its the same for the wireless connection.

It should be 192.168.8.1

For some reason mine was 8.8.4.4

Got it changed and it worked instantly !!

BobHarris

Level 9

53,255 points

Jul 7, 2014 5:49 PM in response to shdh87700

8.8.4.4 is a Google DNS server, and is frequently used by may people.

192.168.8.1 is most likely your home router, which would then be relaying your ISP's DNS server.

But if replacing Google's DNS server with your ISP's DNS server works for you, all is good.

JS507

Level 1

0 points

Dec 8, 2015 5:46 PM in response to bkkrocks

Hi, I have the same problem and I try all the sugestions before, flush DNS, changin DNS, clean cache, PRAM and I still getting the same issue. But when I browse from a windows virtual machine on the mac I load all webpage without any problems.

After many test I found that in chrome, firefox, safary can browse only webpages that use SSL for example https://google.com because when you reach it in the browser it's redirect to an ssl connection, I made the same test to many other sites that use SSL and I can browse. But If you only try to access any webpage to 80 port they never load.

If any one have an idea about what is happening here ? please let me know.

My firewall was down and antivirus diseable when I made the test.

Apr 15, 2016 8:16 PM in response to bkkrocks

Ok guys, I think i've found another solution. I tried all of the above including flushing DNS, stopping the mDNS.., rebooting my router and cable modem, etc. It then occurred to me that this could be a routing issue - a conflict of IP could do this. I was able to fix it by going to Network > Advanced > TCP/IP > Renew DHCP Lease. That did it for me, I was able to immediately browse.

Because a lease can last days, rebooting your router wouldn't fix this issue since your mac has that IP in its routing table and so does your router. Doing the renew does because the router releases your lease then realizes something else has the iP you had before, so it'll give you a new one.

Good luck!