Periodically "safari can't open the page" - not a ISP issue

It is indirectly an issue with your ISP.

Adding DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security:

If you are using a single computer: Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu, and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' add the following two numbers:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

(You can also enter them if you click on Advanced and then DNS)

Sometimes reversing the order of the DNS numbers can be beneficial in cases where there is a long delay before web pages start to load, and then suddenly load at normal speed:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2296

If your computer is part of a network: please refer to this page:http://www.opendns.com/start/bestpractices/#yournetwork and follow the advice given.

(An explanation of why using Open DNS is both safe and a good idea can be read here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/opendsn-what-is-opendns-why-required-2/2587 /

Open DNS also provides an anti-phishing feature:http://www.opendns.com/solutions/homenetwork/anti-phishing/ )

Wikipedia also has an interesting article about Open DNS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

Hi

I've followed the advice of you and others on this topic, including changing the DNS servers, but without success.

So I was intruiged by the comment "It is indirectly an issue with your ISP." Is this an issue I could lay at their door? I'm paying them a lot at the moment, so if there's anything the ISP is doing wrong then maybe I should challenge them on it.

Marcus

(Presumably you regularly empty your Safari cache by deleting the following file: Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/cache.db and also clear your History)

One reason for a slowness in page loading may be the 'DNS Pre-fetching' feature of Safari 5.x as is described here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408?viewlocale=en_US

You can cancel DNS pre-fetching by going to Terminal and typing:

defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false

You have to restart Safari for it to take effect.

If Safari seems to hang for ages:

If you have a lot of tabs open and/or a lot of pages running Flash, Safari can sometimes 'hang', requiring a restart of Safari. This can often be inconvenient, and as it is rarely Safari itself that is hanging but merely one of its plug-ins, usually Flash, there is a way using Terminal to restart the plug-ins (without restarting Safari and losing your tabs) by quitting the WebPluginHost process:

Open the Terminal from the Utilities folder in /Applications and type killall -9 WebKitPluginHost

Note that this command kills all Safari plug-ins, not just Flash. All plug-ins should start back up when you reload the page. Then go back to Safari and refresh any pages that were using the Flash plug-in. This also fixes the Beachball of Death. Try this whenever Safari gets slow or freezes. The latest versions of Flash 10.1 and later appear to have improved the situation somewhat, but haven't completed eliminated it.

For this and other reasons Apple switched their websites to HTML in January 2011: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/26/apple_revamps_its_public_website_u sing_html5.html

The main reason I mentioned your ISP is that their servers may be too busy, which is why I suggested Open DNS.

Thanks for the good advice and information. In my case the problem refuses to go away, and since I'm moving home and ISP the week after next, I think I'll just have to live with it for a little while more.

By the way I'm not used to Terminal - so if I could ask, when I entered the command, terminal returned straight to the ~ Marcus$ prompt, without any acknowledgement that the command had been executed - I take it that's normal?

Lastly +1 for disabling Flash. Speeds up things no end. Can recommend the plug-in "Click to Flash" which lets you choose which Flash to run and which not.

I was able to resolve this issue after deleting all locations and renaming the "Automatic" one, after that i went to Advanced - TCP/IP and clicked on Renew DHCP Lease. Everything worked after that and the problem was gone.

I hope this helps.