My ISP, (Three Ireland), renewed my contract the other day and gave me a good deal plus a new router/modem, (what is the difference between the two?). The router is even a bit faster than the old one  . I have managed to get everything up and running as it was with the old router, with the exception of two sites! No matter what I do, I always get the message that either of the sites 'took too long to respond' or similar. I have cleared the cache, tried three different browsers, but I can not connect to these two sites - one is one of my banking sites, so I want to be able to keep my eye on it. Checking on the 'is this site down' type of sites shows no problem with the sites. Obviously this is connected in some way, but I can not access the sites via my mobile phone neither.  . Unless it is a coincidence, I am guessing that maybe the problem is in the Settings in the new router. I have tried all sorts but am still stuck with the problem. Any of you more computer knowledgeable people able to suggest owt?

Addit: The banking site is 365online.com if somebody wants to see if they can get to the site.

365online came up straight away for me, David, which I know doesn't really help you, but at least it isn't the bank that is down.

Hope you get it sorted soon.

Cheers,

Chris

PS. Have you tried rebooting the router? Should be a button on it somewhere and it sometimes does the trick.

Hi

It might be the DNS settings on your new router. Do you have the old one still and can you connect to it to see what the DNS settings were?

DNS is what converts your website address into the actual numeric IP number.

Cheers

Paul

Quote from: PaulCheffus on January 10, 2023, 08:24:54 PM
Do you have the old one still and can you connect to it to see what the DNS settings were?

Hi Paul, thanks for that. I do still have the old router so I should be able to connect it up alright - something to do in the morning! I will let you know how I get on. 

It might be DNS problems as Paul suggests but it does seem very specific if it's just two sites.

I seem to be suffering recently from occasional (and irregular) loss of DNS on my broadband: the internet connection remains up and some pages already open continue to work but others fail to resolve. It's not just one PC as everyone in the household gets the same problem on their PCs, Smart TVs or whatever. I have to disconnect and reconnect the broadband link which I can do from the router's admin web page without having to physically reboot but it is annoying. Sometimes it's fine for days then has a spate of failures.


@dannyboy you asked what is the difference between a modem and a router?

A modem is responsible for converting the digital electronic signal into a modulated tone which can be sent down an old style copper phone line, or de-modulate that tone back to a digital signal. Hence "modulator/demodulator" or "modem" for short.  With today's fibre optic high speed broadband connections the modem does the translation from electrical to optical and v.v.

A router is responsible for directing ("routing") traffic around a network, so  between all your home network's wired and WiFi devices and to and from the internet.  It'll also usually do things such as assign unique addresses to your connected devices, map your internal network addresses to and from internet addresses etc. 

What the ISP calls a router is typically nowadays a combination of internet modem, router, and WiFi Wireless Access Point in one box, maybe with additional features such as services to expose a plugged in USB memory stick, hard drive, or printer as a network shared device.

I had a similar problem some years ago when Tesco's website became unreachable from the NTL network for a few days, nothing I or Tesco could do to resolve it, it was an NTL problem.

Swapping back to the old router may not work, each router can be registered to the network to prevent unauthorised access.

If you know how to get to the command prompt, then the Tracert and Ping commands will show where it is failing.

If it is a fault with your ISP's DNS system then you can set your own DNS provider in the set up of each connected device to get around this.

Dave

If I am doing this right, the current DNS number is xxx.xxx.x.x  The original router had an identical DNS number, with the exception of the third part - it is now '8', whereas on the old router it was '1'. I have tried using the old DNS number, but the whole thing stops working, telling me that there is no internet connection. I am now in the position of being where I was yesterday, ie a decent connection speed, everything working as it should - with the exception of the two sites. Disconnecting the router from the computer and power makes no difference. My mobile phone is obviously linked to the computer, as I can not access the two sites on the phone either. It looks like I am going to have to put in a query with 'Three' to see if they can assist. Thank you @Coyote @PaulCheffus @Papyrus for your replies and suggestions. And thanks to @ntpntpntp for his router v modem explanation.

Change the DNS to 1.1.1.1, which is Cloudfare, and should work everywhere. Other DNS providers are available, you don't have to use your ISP's one.

Dave

Since the reply above from @Coyote I received a message to install a Windows update. As I usually do, I created a 'System Restore' point, (just in case  ), and then installed the update. When the update had completed, I did as suggested by Dave and changed the DNS to 1.1.1.1. but I ended up with a 'no internet' message. "Oh dear me" thinks I, (or words to that effect  ). So I put everything back to how it was and the 'missing' sites connected! . To do a test of it all, I shut down the computer and the router, left them off for over ten minutes whilst I had a coffee and then powered everything up again. Guess what? I can connect to all sites! I have no idea what has changed, maybe the suggestion by Dave had something to do with it, but, as I said, I have put things back to how they were - so I am stumped - but happy!. 

This reminds me that I had something similar happen recently.

Best I could determine was a lot of websites now use security systems to prevent them being attacked and one of the ways they do this by automatically blocking access to IPs/even blocks of IP addresses that are originating suspicious traffic. Now that's not to say you were doing anything wrong but someone using a system on the same 'block' of IP addresses as you may well have been, so the whole block of IP addresses gets banned temporarily, hence everything starting to work again after a certain period of time as it did in my case too.

As a lot of this security is automated or contracted out to third-parties I'd imagine most of the time the owner of the website can't actually do anything about it.

Quote from: dannyboy on January 11, 2023, 01:20:12 PM
Guess what? I can connect to all sites!

I've only just seen this thread and was about to suggest that you let me know your log-in details for 365online so I could fully test it for you from here 
Seems you don't need me to do that now 

Quote from: Trainfish on January 15, 2023, 03:44:13 PM
about to suggest that you let me know your log-in details for 365online so I could fully test it for you from here

That is one thing about this forum - everybody is so helpful. Thank you for the thought.  . (Incidentally, that account only ever has a maximum of about €200 in it ).