This is one of the scenario that we all user sometimes find ourselves into. But what does it mean? No connectivity typically means two things. Either it is a disconnected NIC (Network Interface Card) or an inability to connect to a certain resource. Since this article only focus on the problem implies you are on the Internet but you can not browse, point of view.
In this case, do yourself some immediate checkup which should include the following steps.
Are you able to visit other websites? If you are not, go back and triple check you local connectivity. Are you able to ping the site?
What is ping?
Ping is one of the command line commands that you can use to see status of certain website or network and so on. Open up your command prompt by typing CMD in the search bar and hit enter. Once the command line interface has showed up, type the following: C:\ > ping www.nameofthesite.com and hit enter. If the site is up and running, you will find list of same IP address of the site with other information like the time it takes to respond. In case the site is down, you will see a message something like “ping request could not find host www.nameofthesite.com. please check the name and try again”.
At this point it is obvious that the ping is a failure which gives us the most valuable information. It means the computer is unable to get an IP address for that website. This is a clear indication of a DNS failure and most often a typical issue. To fix a failure to access to a DNS server, try these options below but you need to get comfortable with command line here.
Further actions on Windows
Assuming you are on the Windows system and type ipconfig/flushdns as following – C:\> ipconfig /flushdns and go to Windows IP configuration to successfully flush the DNS resolver Cache.
One of the core thing to note here is, other commands like ifconfig and iwconfig may look similar but no way the same and suitable for flushing DNS cache if it exists in Linux or macOS.
On Windows 10, straight head for Network and Internet in the settings app and hit the Network troubleshooter.
You will find it at the bottom of status list from the left.
Hit it and run the troubleshooter.
Try using another DNS server. There are plenty of DNS servers out there which are open to public. You can try Google’s famous 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.
If DNS is Ok, you need to make sure that you are using the right URL. This case is specially true when you are typing a DNS name into applications like e-mail clients.