I am away from home. My wife at home cannot access the internet with her laptop. I suspect the problem is in the home server I am responsible for.
In brief, the internet can be accessed from the CentOS-6.4 server. Her laptop accesses a WiFi router which is connected to the server. I have to confess that she is the only household member running Windows - Windows XP in her case. Connect to=>Show All Connections shows the WiFi connection is good. But she cannot access the internet, or ping google, etc.
I can get access and login to the server from far away. I see nothing wrong. I have restarted the network, dhcpd and shorewall services. I checked that forwarding is on. I can ping my wife's laptop from the server.
Her setup has been working fine for months if not years, accessing her work over VPN. But now she is just trying to browse.
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
On 07/08/2013 02:00 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
What browser/version is she using? Have you had her open up a terminal (Sorry, it's been too long since I last used Windows for anything except games at a private club, and I may have the terminology wrong.) and try to ping someplace? My suggestion is mit.edu, as I know you'll get a response, as I just tested. If that fails does she get a response of Unknown Host? If so, her DNS might be misconfigured, but before checking that, try this:
ping 23.48.166.151
As that's the same machine as you'd get from the other command. If that works, it's probably her DNS. If not:
tracert 23.48.166.151
This gives you the Windows version of traceroute, and should show you how far her ping gets before failing. Also, you can try it with just about any state university after testing from your own box to make sure it responds; I just suggested MIT because I know that it works, just fine.
If you're wondering how I know all this because I don't use Windows any more, I did telephone tech support for a major ISP for 7.5 years and troubleshooting connection/connectivity issues was a large part of my daily work.
On 07/08/2013 02:00 PM, Timothy Murphy issued this missive:
I am away from home. My wife at home cannot access the internet with her laptop. I suspect the problem is in the home server I am responsible for.
In brief, the internet can be accessed from the CentOS-6.4 server. Her laptop accesses a WiFi router which is connected to the server. I have to confess that she is the only household member running Windows - Windows XP in her case. Connect to=>Show All Connections shows the WiFi connection is good. But she cannot access the internet, or ping google, etc.
I can get access and login to the server from far away. I see nothing wrong. I have restarted the network, dhcpd and shorewall services. I checked that forwarding is on. I can ping my wife's laptop from the server.
Her setup has been working fine for months if not years, accessing her work over VPN. But now she is just trying to browse.
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
Step 1: Reboot the WiFi router. It may have lunched its routing tables. It happens.
Step 2: Reboot her laptop. Not a warm boot (ctrl-alt-del), but a full-tilt cold boot from power off. You say she uses a VPN to contact work, and it's often that the VPN clients leave crumbs in Windows' routing and DNS lookup tables.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check? - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Stevens wrote:
On 07/08/2013 02:00 PM, Timothy Murphy issued this missive:
I am away from home. My wife at home cannot access the internet with her laptop. I suspect the problem is in the home server I am responsible for.
In brief, the internet can be accessed from the CentOS-6.4 server. Her laptop accesses a WiFi router which is connected to the server. I have to confess that she is the only household member running Windows - Windows XP in her case. Connect to=>Show All Connections shows the WiFi connection is good. But she cannot access the internet, or ping google, etc.
I can get access and login to the server from far away. I see nothing wrong. I have restarted the network, dhcpd and shorewall services. I checked that forwarding is on. I can ping my wife's laptop from the server.
Her setup has been working fine for months if not years, accessing her work over VPN. But now she is just trying to browse.
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
Thanks very much for your response.
Step 1: Reboot the WiFi router. It may have lunched its routing tables. It happen
We tried that.
Step 2: Reboot her laptop. Not a warm boot (ctrl-alt-del), but a full-tilt cold boot from power off. You say she uses a VPN to contact work, and it's often that the VPN clients leave crumbs in Windows' routing and DNS lookup tables.
I'll suggest that to her.
Thanks Tim
Joe Zeff wrote:
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
Thanks for your response.
What browser/version is she using?
She was using Internet Explorer, but she also has Firefox
Have you had her open up a terminal (Sorry, it's been too long since I last used Windows for anything except games at a private club, and I may have the terminology wrong.) and try to ping someplace? My suggestion is mit.edu, as I know you'll get a response, as I just tested. If that fails does she get a response of Unknown Host? If so, her DNS might be misconfigured, but before checking that, try this:
ping 23.48.166.151
I did do this, with www.google.ie (she is in Ireland) and its IP address.
As that's the same machine as you'd get from the other command. If that works, it's probably her DNS. If not:
tracert 23.48.166.151
Thanks. I'll try that.
This gives you the Windows version of traceroute, and should show you how far her ping gets before failing. Also, you can try it with just about any state university after testing from your own box to make sure it responds; I just suggested MIT because I know that it works, just fine.
If you're wondering how I know all this because I don't use Windows any more, I did telephone tech support for a major ISP for 7.5 years and troubleshooting connection/connectivity issues was a large part of my daily work.
I guess I could ring my ISP (Eircom) and try not to mention Linux ...
Rick Stevens wrote:
Step 2: Reboot her laptop. Not a warm boot (ctrl-alt-del), but a full-tilt cold boot from power off. You say she uses a VPN to contact work, and it's often that the VPN clients leave crumbs in Windows' routing and DNS lookup tables.
That did the trick, thank you very much. Marriage secured, at least until the next outage.
Actually, by a fluke the internet went off where I am in Italy tonight for about 10 minutes. How I hate that red light on the modem.
Makes me think again that I should have a backup system, maybe tethering a mobile phone.
There is a competition in Ireland - maybe everywhere in the world - between ISPs to see who can lie best about internet speed. I suspect my ISP may be using their new modem, so called e-Fibre, at the limit of their functionality.
Apropos of nothing, I recall being told by a Telecom engineer when modem speeds increased from 300bps to 1200 bps that it had been proved "scientifically" that this was the fastest speed copper wire could support.
Timothy Murphy wrote:
I am away from home. My wife at home cannot access the internet with her laptop. I suspect the problem is in the home server I am responsible for.
In brief, the internet can be accessed from the CentOS-6.4 server. Her laptop accesses a WiFi router which is connected to the server. I have to confess that she is the only household member running Windows - Windows XP in her case. Connect to=>Show All Connections shows the WiFi connection is good. But she cannot access the internet, or ping google, etc.
I can get access and login to the server from far away. I see nothing wrong. I have restarted the network, dhcpd and shorewall services. I checked that forwarding is on. I can ping my wife's laptop from the server.
Her setup has been working fine for months if not years, accessing her work over VPN. But now she is just trying to browse.
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
I would start with "man tcpdump" and watch the packets going to/from the net. I might guess it's a firewall issue, but without knowing way more about your setup, that's guess.
Rick Stevens wrote:
On 07/08/2013 02:00 PM, Timothy Murphy issued this missive:
I am away from home. My wife at home cannot access the internet with her laptop. I suspect the problem is in the home server I am responsible for.
In brief, the internet can be accessed from the CentOS-6.4 server. Her laptop accesses a WiFi router which is connected to the server. I have to confess that she is the only household member running Windows - Windows XP in her case. Connect to=>Show All Connections shows the WiFi connection is good. But she cannot access the internet, or ping google, etc.
I can get access and login to the server from far away. I see nothing wrong. I have restarted the network, dhcpd and shorewall services. I checked that forwarding is on. I can ping my wife's laptop from the server.
Her setup has been working fine for months if not years, accessing her work over VPN. But now she is just trying to browse.
I'm not sure what tests I can run to diagnose the problem. Any suggestions very gratefully received. They may save a marriage ...
Step 1: Reboot the WiFi router. It may have lunched its routing tables. It happens.
Step 2: Reboot her laptop. Not a warm boot (ctrl-alt-del), but a full-tilt cold boot from power off. You say she uses a VPN to contact work, and it's often that the VPN clients leave crumbs in Windows' routing and DNS lookup tables.
Oh hell, that's it. The typical Cisco or similar VPN software packages don't allow access to anything BUT the VPN. Don't start the VPN and everything should work. Sorry, been years since I did that.