Has MN become Supreme Ruler of the interweb?

[Ponders]

...only it is literally the only site that will open for me atm - I can't get google or any newspapers or BBC - & I can only get into MN via Firefox (AOL logs me in OK but won't open any websites)

I've tried rebooting the router, that has made no difference, but

firefox continued to access MN pages while the router was unplugged

(Is Justine hiding in my router?)

Firefox keeps a store of content from websites you visit, and also keeps a copy of the IP address so it could still find out how to reach the MN website even though other services are not working.

Is your connection through AOL (rather than that you use the AOL browser as you are familiar with it) ?

yes, our broadband connection is through aol (sorry, have been logged off for hours this evening!)

I can't connect to any other regularly used sites via firefox - only MN

have just tried google, credit card, FB & bank via firefox - none of them will connect

have logged in to aol, can access email, but no websites

baffled

will ring aol customer services

OK, rang them, was talked through a selection of settings, changed 1 setting, logged out & in again, & all is ok now

I assume there was a DNS problem, but was not immediately able to think of solution for you as I've never had an AOL account to know what else they do 'oddly' (the browser causes enough problems on some web sites).

Glad they helped you get back to normal use.

Thanks, NG

(what is DNS???)

Domain Name Servers are systems similar in function to directory enquiries, but completely automated, very fast, and FREE!

The majority of network connections use a series of 4 digits to denote the Internet Protocol address. Your router probably has an IP address of something like 10.0.0.2 or 192.168.1.1 (or variations on those numbers, because those are 'reserved' for local networks, rather than being part of the worldwide set of addresses.

It's a bit like having a switchboard in a big firm. Each firm has an external phone number (unique IP address in the worldwide set) and can have extensions 1001 to 1999 for its internal use. The next firm down the road also has extensions 1001 to 1999 but there's no confusion when extension 1001 in one building makes a call, as their outgoing message to somewhere else in the world will have their unique external number 020-1234-5678 and extension '1001' is invisible.

When you enter a web address in your browser, a message is sent out to do an address lookup and after that is answered the browser will remember the number.

So asking your browser to visit www.mumsnet.com may get answered with 85.92.212.70 while a lookup for www.bbc.co.uk will get 212.58.244.66

I've skimmed over the "how it works" because it has some clever little extras (and I am no expert)...

However, If you imagine that in the telephone analogy you call your switchboard, ask for the BBC and an automatic lookup takes place, then the 'clever bit' is that if you had a fax machine, and wanted to fax the BBC, then the fax machine would 'ask' and be given a number suitable for sending a fax.

With DNS, if you send mail via your ISP, then the ISP mail service will ask for a DNS lookup for the numbers of the mail servers and then attempts to send your e-mail..

It's also possible to use multiple servers to share a load, so if you look at the web addresses on a service like Ebay, sometimes you may see www.ebay.co.uk but at other times you see cgi.ebay.co.uk or shop.ebay.co.uk or contact.ebay.co.uk

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So, if you have no way to get requests for DNS checks answered, you cannot access sites without knowing the IP address (and unfortunately, even knowing the IP address does not guarantee that you would see pages you wanted - for small businesses, many different websites may be on the same server with the same IP address.

I hope I didn't lose you way back, but feel sure there could be better explanations online and more detailed technical explanations found on Wikipedia.

(thanks for trying though )