Have a Dell PC (Windows2000) and a Sony Laptop (XP) connected by Road Runner Broadband and a wireless router. Both are having problems connecting to the same webpages. I get "This page cannot be displayed" error, with the "Cannot find server or DNS error" at the bottom. Some of the pages that don’t work are: hotmail.com, myfamily.com, microsoft.com, help.rr.com, but other pages like yahoo, google, cnn, load fine. My outlook mail works fine on the PC. I tried using Netscape (IE is my default browser) and same problem. I disconnected the wireless router and still have the same problem with the same websites. The laptop can dial up through our phone line using AOL and can connect to the problem sites. Also, we live in a development and in some parts of the house the laptop can pick up one of our neighbors wireless and can connect to the problem sites that way also. So the problem is definitely not in the laptop browser. I called Road Runner’s support line and they said it must be a virus, but I don’t see how that’s possible if the laptop works over the phone line. They had me open a cmd window and ping hotmail.com and it connected, so they said it was not them. After I hung up I tried pinging myfamily.com and microsoft.com and both of those timed out and wouldn’t go through. So is it really a connection issue? Why would it only be certain websites? I cleared all my history, cookies and temporary internet files and that didn’t help. I tried the winsock fix and that didn’t work either. What else could it be?

In the command prompt, type tracert myfamily.com. These command will give you the ip address for myfamily.com and will go through a series of routers, these will tell you where you are getting stuck.

Ok Here are the tracerts for myfamily.com and microsoft.com. If I’m reading them right, it’s getting past my ISP so the problems not there, right? So I’m losing a connection somehow? What would cause that? And why only certain sites? C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert myfamily.com Tracing route to myfamily.com [66.43.25.130] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.1.1 2 <10 ms 15 ms <10 ms 10.105.224.1 3 <10 ms 16 ms <10 ms 24-164-161-17.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.17] 4 <10 ms 16 ms <10 ms 24-164-161-13.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.13] 5 15 ms 63 ms 47 ms 24-164-161-9.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.9] 6 <10 ms 16 ms 31 ms lbt-wbo-5505-a-sc0.nyroc.rr.com [24.164.161.5] 7 <10 ms 16 ms <10 ms 24-164-161-1.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.1] 8 <10 ms 16 ms 16 ms 24.164.160.53 9 <10 ms 15 ms 16 ms so-6-1.car2.Weehawken1.Level3.net [63.208.104.5] 10 <10 ms 15 ms 16 ms ge-7-0-0.mp2.Weehawken1.Level3.net [4.68.125.141 ] 11 93 ms 94 ms 94 ms so-0-0-0.mpls2.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net [209.247 .11.62] 12 78 ms 94 ms 94 ms ge-6-0.hsa2.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net [209.244.27 .102] 13 94 ms 94 ms 93 ms ge-6-2.hsa1.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net [209.244.27 .105] 14 94 ms 93 ms 94 ms unknown.Level3.net [64.158.68.14] 15 93 ms 94 ms 94 ms unknown.Level3.net [64.158.69.14] 16 94 ms 94 ms 94 ms 71.4.83.18.ptr.us.xo.net [71.4.83.18] 17 * Request timed out. 18 * Request timed out. 19 * Request timed out 20 * Request timed out. 21 * Request timed out 22 * Request timed out. 23 * Request timed out. 24 * Request timed out. 25 * Request timed out. 26 * Request timed out. 27 * Request timed out. 28 * Request timed out. 29 * Request timed out. 30 * Request timed out. Trace complete. C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert microsoft.com Tracing route to microsoft.com [207.46.130.108] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.1.1 2 <10 ms 15 ms <10 ms 10.105.224.1 3 <10 ms 16 ms <10 ms 24-164-161-17.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.17] 4 <10 ms 16 ms 15 ms 24-164-161-13.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.13] 5 <10 ms 16 ms 16 ms 24-164-161-9.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.9] 6 <10 ms 16 ms <10 ms lbt-wbo-5505-a-sc0.nyroc.rr.com [24.164.161.5] 7 <10 ms 15 ms <10 ms 24-164-161-1.hvc.rr.com [24.164.161.1] 8 <10 ms 16 ms 16 ms 24.164.160.53 9 <10 ms 15 ms 16 ms so-6-1.car2.Weehawken1.Level3.net [63.208.104.5] 10 <10 ms 47 ms 16 ms ge-7-0-0.mp1.Weehawken1.Level3.net [4.68.125.137 ] 11 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms as-1-0.mp2.Seattle1.Level3.net [209.247.10.133] 12 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms ge-2-0-0-52.gar1.Seattle1.Level3.net [4.68.105.4 1] 13 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms 65.59.235.6 14 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms ten7-1.tuk-76cb-1a.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.35.17] 15 79 ms 78 ms 78 ms pos1-0.iuskixcpxc1202.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.36.14 6] 16 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms pos1-0.cpk-12ix-1b.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.155.37] 17 78 ms 78 ms 94 ms pos4-0.tke-12ix-2b.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.155.29] 18 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms pos0-0.wst-12ix-1b.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.155.14] 19 78 ms 78 ms 78 ms pos1-0.iuscixwstc1202.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.155.2 1] 20 * Request timed out 21 * Request timed out. 22 * Request timed out. 23 * Request timed out. 24 * Request timed out 25 * Request timed out. 26 * Request timed out. 27 * Request timed out. 28 * Request timed out. 29 * Request timed out. 30 * Request timed out. Trace complete.

That's a question you need to ask your isp support. Let them know where you are being droped.

You've got a packet-size (MTU) problem. When connected via the router, you're effectively on a small LAN, with the router acting as a server for the Internet. Maximum packet size on a LAN is 1500 bytes, so W2K network s/w, the router and the remote webserver should negotiate to ensure that returned packets don't exceed that size. Unfortunately there can be a screw-up when secure protocols are in use - both Hotmail and MS use such protocols. You'd have problems with eBay as well - I did. What is happening is that an extra "header" has to be added to the incoming packet for the NAT router to "post" it to the correct destination on the internal network. If the website erroneously returns a 1500-byte packet, the router can't send it on to the PC, as with the NAT header added it would be bigger than the network limit. That this is happening is confirmed by the fact that a straight dialup link works fine. The solution is to reduce the MTU for the PC-Router interface. It can be done manually by editing the registry, but it can be quite difficult identifying the entries for the interface in question. I suggest you get hold of a free "tweaking" utility like TCP Optimizer to reduce the MTU. A reboot will be needed for the change to take effect. The utility has a "Largest MTU" test tab - play with this accessing your problem sites, and it'll show you what the setting should be - it was 1486 for me. I recommend you don't set the "TCP Receive Window" to the ridiculously large figure suggested by the utility. It's just not necessary - I have 8Mbit broadband, and 65535 gives me maximum d/l rate (over 800K/sec.)