For the past day or two, every device on my home network has shown limited or no internet access. Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Wikipedia, and a few other common sites still work, but Discord, Steam, Microsoft services, and many other websites will not connect. Pages often hang indefinitely without showing an error.
I use Spectrum, and there has been maintenance in my area, so this may be an ISP problem, but 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 Shield. Pings to the affected sites time out. What could cause only certain websites and services to be unreachable?
3 Answers
It could also be a DNS or routing problem at the modem, router, or ISP level. Try setting DNS manually to a reliable provider such as Cloudflare or Google on one device, then test again. Since the issue affects every device and changing DNS apparently did not resolve it, the ISP's IPv4 service or routing is a strong possibility.
This sounds like an IPv6 connectivity problem. Some sites may be reachable over IPv6, while services such as Steam that rely on IPv4 are failing. If your network is receiving IPv6 addresses but cannot actually route IPv6 traffic, connections can hang exactly like this. Temporarily disable IPv6 on the router or affected device as a test, then contact the ISP if that fixes it.
Run `nslookup` and `tracert` for a site that does not work. `nslookup` shows whether the domain is resolving correctly, while `tracert` can show where the connection stops. Also test the computer through another connection, such as a phone hotspot using USB tethering if the PC has no Wi-Fi. If everything works there, that confirms the home internet connection is the problem.
The computer is connected by Ethernet, so I would need to use USB tethering rather than a normal wireless hotspot. The affected sites currently just wait indefinitely instead of displaying a browser error.