Hi. Struggling to overcome a connection problem that only shows up on a specific website (and probably other sites on same host, although haven’t verified that).
I have a Netgear router, model WNDR3700v4 with the latest firmware (1.0.2.78). It is connected to a modem which in turn is connected to my “Fibre to the Cabinet” (FTTC) DSL connection. Everything works just fine – I can connect to the internet, pick up email, stream video from the likes of BBC iPlayer or 4oD (I’m in the UK, in case you hadn’t guessed) on all of my devices, including Macs, iPhones, Windows PCs and the Smart TV.
And then one of my mailboxes stopped connecting. I footled around with the server settings for a while before deciding that, actually, it wasn’t that that was the problem – the email client (Apple Mail, in this case) just wasn’t connecting to the server (hostpapa.com). Pinging it showed no connection (not that that is a guarantee) and tracert also failed to work. I then tried the website associated with that email account, for which I am an editor and which was working a week ago the last time I posted an article. It too failed to connect – and what’s more, it failed to connect on all my devices, so it is somewhere else. Putting the phone into 4G mode and not WiFi connected me to the website. I have flushed cache and DNS for good measure, but it didn’t have any effect and nor did I expect it to.
So…I use Parental Controls on the router, which connects me to OpenDNS for the DNS. Perhaps that was at fault? Well I’ve gone back to the ISP-supplied DNS instead of OpenDNS, and I know that this has taken because I can now access sites that would normally have been blocked. But still not the one I want. So it doesn’t appear to be an OpenDNS issue either.
Needless to say I have tried off-and-on-ing both the modem and the router, and there is still no change. Something that worked a week ago no longer does, and I am at a loss to explain why.
