A couple websites suddenly being unavailable

As of this evening I've discovered that a couple of regular sites I visit are suddenly not coming up. This includes Wikipedia, Variety, and QuartertoThree. As this is occuring on my PC as well as my tablet, I know its not browser specific.

The message I'm getting is rather odd as well. For some reason it's a Yahoo!-404 Not Found message, which I've not seen before. These websites are up and I can get to them via proxy.

A few months ago I had a similar issue that lasted about a day or so with Broken Forum. I went through tech support with my ISP at the time, and while they weren't able to get it resolved right away, I did get the impression that it might have been at their end.

Any ideas? I did just change routers, but that was a couple of days ago and there were no issues prior to tonight.

A "Yahoo!-404 Not Found"? It sounds like either a virus is redirecting DNS/web traffic on your computer, or your ISP is.

Try using Google's DNS servers, to rule out the latter.

How would a virus be affecting both devices, though? Since both have the same issues.

oops

So it sounds like you think it has to be the ISP then.

I have no idea what exactly was going on in your case, but Google and Amazon have both been increasingly having issues lately with their servers. Today most websites are tied into either or both of them via ads and/or hosting, and the result is that seemingly unrelated websites suddenly stop loading.

The mentioned test will show you for sure.

This whole thing is very weird. After I started this thread this forum started being inaccessible as well. As of this morning QT3 was reachable again, though.

I'm on tech support with my ISP and they had me clear cookies, cache, etc. I tried that on this tablet and now can connect here, but the other sites still won't connect.

Clearing the cache on my PC didn't do anything. And I've been disconnected twice now from tech support web chat with my ISP. So I guess I'll see if it resolves itself, as it did the last time this happened.

Something else that is interesting. My router allows me run ping, trace route, and DNS lookup for any website I enter. For most of the websites I'm having issues with those all time out. But it goes through for this forum even though my PC still won't connect while this tablet does connect to BF. I even tried connecting my PC with the DNS address but got a message saying the host doesn't support that.

Is this happening on every device connected through this router?
Have you gone back to the old router yet?

I haven't tried that yet, maybe tomorrow. But I had no issues the first three days after I got it.

Sites keep switching between being up and down and it varies between my PC and tablet. Earlier both BF and QT3 were acc via the tablet, then neither were several hours ago, and now only BF is. Meanwhile there are a bunch of sites I've had no issues with and a few that haven't worked since this started.

Since we already have this thread, does anyone know what's going on with pcmag.com? The website just redirects me to google.com when I try to access it, or any article. Same for www.pcmag.com but other subdomains work. Happens across all browsers and on iPad too. Broken country redirect?

Sounds likely. Can you try browsing it from a proxy? Opera mobile maybe? http://www.opera.com/mobile/

Hmm, I just tried loading pcmag.com in Opera Mini on the iPad but still got the same redirect to Google. I assume you suggested Opera because it goes through the Opera caching proxy? There don't seem to be any manual proxy options in the app.

Yeah, it was my understanding that it accesses the site from the Opera-side, but then, maybe they pass the local info onto the site instead of generic stuff. Definitely worth trying it behind an actual proxy on your PC.

To update my issue, I seem to have fixed it, at least for now, with a router reset. Looks like for some reason the new router connects and works but Windows doesn't recognize any drivers being installed for it. I filed a tech support request with the manufacturer since the router didn't include a software disk - their website insists they don't need one since everything is on the router. So we'll see, but for now all the website issues I've had have gone away.

Bingo. www.pcmag.com loads correctly through a free anonymizer service with a US proxy. Apparently I'm the only one in Germany who wants to read that site since I couldn't find any search hits on the issue, even though I've seen it for a week at least. Finally I get to read all those valuable John C. Dvorak columns that I missed!

What's the make and model on the router?

Netgear WNDR3400v2.

Yeah. Fuck Netgear.

Anecdata FTW.

No skin off my back.

Well, sure. But the alternatives at the time were Linksys and Belkin, and since my roommate foolishly spent $70 on a Netgear wireless adapter for his computer I figured going Netgear for the router would simplify things. Not to mention that my PC is hardwired anyway and the only thing I use the wireless for is my tablet.

If it turns out to be a POS I'll take it back, but as far as commodity networking stuff goes I don't see any evidence there is a huge difference between the brands that have all the retail shelf space.