For the past day or two, every device on my home network has shown a no-internet warning, even though Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Wikipedia, and a few other Google services still work. Discord, Steam, Microsoft applications, and many other websites cannot connect at all. Pages either remain stuck loading or show a blank screen, and ping attempts to the affected services time out.
I use Spectrum, and there has been maintenance in my area, so this may be an ISP problem. However, support did not find a solution. I have already restarted the modem, router, and computer; changed DNS servers; reset Windows network settings; run the built-in diagnostics; and toggled the firewall and Spectrum security features. What could cause only certain sites and services to work?
3 Answers
The fact that pages just hang instead of displaying a normal browser error is consistent with a connection or routing failure rather than a browser problem. Because all devices are affected, contact the ISP again and specifically report that IPv4 sites are timing out while some IPv6-capable services still work. Ask them to check the modem's IPv4 and IPv6 routing, not just the general service status.
This sounds like an IPv6 connectivity problem. Some services may be reachable over IPv6, while others, such as Steam, rely on IPv4 and would fail if your ISP's IPv4 routing or DNS is having trouble. Since every device on the network is affected, the issue is more likely with the modem, router, or ISP than with one computer. Restart both the modem and router, then try manually assigning Cloudflare or Google DNS to one device as a test.
Run `nslookup` for a site that does not work, followed by `tracert` for that same domain. The first command can show whether DNS is returning an IPv6 address, and the second can indicate where routing stops. If IPv6 addresses are being returned but IPv6 traffic cannot actually reach the destination, temporarily disabling IPv6 on the router or affected computer may confirm the diagnosis.
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