funnily enough, ive just had this happen to me - some pages/sites were loading fine, and some downloads were working while others werent - my usual cure for this is to do a hard reboot on my router...

Hmm, I dunno how to do that

pull the power lead out of the back of the router, then plug it back in.
wait 30 seconds or so for it to reconnect, then try again.
you can try a soft reboot as well (rebooting via the control panel), but that doesnt always clear the problem.
ive had numerous routers from numerous manufacturers over the years, and every single one has needed this...

Most common cause after router issues when certain pages aren't coming up is in my experience DNS issues. Although the two are often related as many people use the DNS services from their router. If you use a computer only in one network and you aren't too scared of IT stuff the easiest way to avoid annoying DNS problems is to tell your computer which DNS servers to actually use to translate www.whatsmyname.tld to something a computer can actually understand circumventing your router for these services.

And I thought it was gona be complicated. I'd already turned it on and off again, but will give it one more go or kill the damn thing trying

It's still playing up, only now it's picking and choosing web pages even more. For instance right after I posted on here last night it decided that I was no longer allowed to look at T21, but now it's let me on here again. it's so frustrating

I'll be honest, I didn't really understand Chambler's response. Does anyone have any idiot proof step-by-step instructions I could try for that or any other remedy?

Sorry it was a bit technical and the exact settings are very dependent on which ISP you are with.

First you will need to check if you are receiving DNS services from your router or not.
Easiest way to do this (presuming you are using Windows XP with old style taskbar) is to go to start --> settings --> network connections and double click on the network connection which is used for your internet connection (most cases that will be called something like local area connection 1). A windows should pop up with some general information about the connection. Now select the status tab and hit the details button. This will show you exactly how your connection is configured. If your IP address and your DNS servers are very similar (and most likely the same as your default gateway) (for example your ip is 192.168.1.10 and your dns server is 192.168.1.1 (so only the last block is different)) you are using your router for DNS services as well.

If this is the case you need to figure out what the proper DNS servers are for your particular ISP. (overview of dns and mail servers). Now you have to note down the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway from the details window as you will need these figures later.

Go back to network connection and double click on the network connection used for your internet connection and select properties. At the bottom of the list now select Internet Protocol and hit properties. Most likely it will tell you it obtains the ip and dns information automatically (this is also your safe fall back settings if this is indeed the case). Now fill in the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway you noted down earlier and in the DNS fields fill in the DNS servers from your ISP. Hit OK and hit OK once more and your PC will probably struggle for a few seconds when it's done with updating these settings try to see if your internet connection is working any better.

If the internet connection stopped working entirely (you most likely made a typo somewhere or selected a wrong set of DNS servers) try the free dns information from the bottom of the earlier link instead of your isps ones. If that still doesn't help put everything back to obtain automatically and your connection should at least come back as it was before.

Chambler, I may live with a Marine but my heart is yours

I'm using Vista (don't blame me, it came with the PC!!) and I'm with Be for my internet (it's an O2 company) so I had to paraphrase your instructions and use the free DNS information as Be weren't on the list and I couldn't find it anywhere. However, it would appear that you've helped me fix the problem!! I'm reserving full scale celebrations until it manages a couple of days of not being a bitch, but it's looking good for now.

Thank you SO much! I was really starting to go out of my mind!

Another couple of quickies if you're in the mood:
1. It seems a little slower to open web pages now, will that get better or do I have to learn to deal with it?
2. Any ideas why it started doing this when it's been working fine for a couple of months?

Thanks again, you're an actual lifesaver

I'm glad it seems to have solved your problems. It seems however that the problem is not with your router but actually with the DNS servers at your ISP.

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I am around today as due to the DNS issue that we have had for the last 3 nights.

It has come to my attention that these "outages" (which are not real outages) has been casued by a number of Be members who have been sending thousands of DNS requests per second. This in turn resulted in our DNS servers RAM to be used fully and did not allowing other members to use our service, this resulted in what looked like outage to alot of members and also slow repsonse times for others.

I now have the list of those members and have started to remove their service under the FUP.

Let me stress that I have never had to use the FUP before and the only reason I am using it now is that this handfull of members have affected 100's of members with Be and 02.

We have a team right now who are still working on the issue to make sure it can not happen again. We have reduced the allowed DNS requests per second from 10000 to 25 (we have dropped it stage by stage with no side affect e.g. 5000, 1000, 500, etc) Our team will be working on this until we have a stable DNS services again (which should be today)

Once we are stable a team of bright thinkers from both BE and 02 will look at our servers to see what we can do to improve the servers for both brands.

I will keep you posted on this issue over the next 48hours,

Kind regards,
_________________
Brett Coles
Head of Member Services

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The reason loading pages is slower has to do with the fact that when you type in a request for a website your computer will ask the DNS server to check it's list (no they don't check twice that's just Santa, although some ISPs do use the police filters to ensure the page you are loaded aren't naughty but nice ) which translates the name to an actual ip address. Normally this request would go to your router which would check a small local list and if the page wasn't on there (or hadn't been refreshed for a while) would ask your ISP and just pass the answer back to your computer. At the moment you are using an opendns DNS server which means that instead of being available within the network of your ISP the request actually has to go through a bigger part of the internet and travel back to you before your computer can actually start retrieving the website. So instead of asking a computer near you, you are asking a computer on the other side of the world / country.

Hopefully the issues with the DNS servers at Be / O2 will be resolved over the weekend therefore is you undo the changes to the network settings on for example Monday chances are you will have your "normal" service again and websites will load a lot faster again.

my next bit of advice would be to suggest that your ISP was having problems, just wait for them to sort it out - but chambler beat me to it...
if it wasnt that, i would have mentioned that vista sometimes has this problem even with a fully functioning DNS server.

Thanks lads

I wouldn't normally have been that bothered so early in a fault, but my other half has been posted in Germany for a month (missing Xmas, New Year and my birthday before he comes back) and when it stopped my Hotmail loading I started losing it cuz that's currently our major means of communication

I'll switch it all back again after the weekend and see what's going on then