[willed]

My iBook, which has until recently been connecting to the internet on this wireless network without problems, is no longer loading web pages, checking mail or generally going online. However, the Diagnostic software (in OS 10.4) thinks that the internet connection is fine. The excuse Safari gives is that the server(s) of the webpage(s) I try to access stopped responding, not that I am not connected to the internet. Any ideas? The connection was working fine until yesterday, and I am writing this on my housemate's PC which is connected to the same wireless network, so I'm thinking the problem must be at my end. Mysterious stuff.

I just know this is one of those threads that will slowly sink to the bottom of the page without getting any replies... Please prove me wrong!

[ghporter]

Can you ping anything? The real test is whether or not that sort of thing works; use Terminal and issue the command "ping www.macnn.com" (no quotes, of course) and see what happens. If you ARE really connected, you'll get a bunch of reports for how long each ping request took to get from your computer to MacNN. Even if you get mesages that the request timed out, it will tell you if your computer is resolving the URL into an IP.

If that doesn't work, try "ping 216.22.45.41" (again without the quotes). This will test the connection "raw" without depending on a Domain Name Server to translate the address for you. If that does work, try the above IP in Safari's address box-it could simply be that your ISP changed DNS servers and you didn't get the memo.

I should add that I'm leaving this in Mac OS because there's a possibility that a recent OS update may have hosed a setting or two and someone will chime in right away to let us both know. If it's not that, then we'll move this thread to the Networking forum...

[willed]

Thanks very much ghporter. I tried 'pinging' both macnn and google. While "a bunch of reports" don't turn up, the following does:
PING google.com (64.233.187.99): 56 data bytes

I'm guessing that this means that the computer is resolving the URL to an IP? I haven't got a timeout message yet and it's been a good few minutes.

What does this mean in terms of my connection?

Just so you know, I haven't yet upgraded to 10.4.3 - I'm running 10.4.2 - so this isn't technically an OS problem, I just didn't think to put this in the Networking forum. Sorry!

[ghporter]

Your computer is resolving URLs, which means something is working. What isn't working, that's another thing, and I think I'll move the thread to networking to let folks who've seen this sort of thing point you in the right direction.