Member Avatar for NewMacUser

Hi everyone,

I just got my new Powerbook G4 today and it's working great except for one thing, I can't access hardly any websites. The computer says that it cannot find the server for the website. .Mac, CNN.com and a handful of others work, but nothing else. Not even the Apple store will pop up, only .Mac. I'm hooked up to a LAN from a satellite internet service that we have set up in our hangar in Afghanistan. I think it has something to do with proxys but our administrator says that the system doesn't use proxys, so I don't have them enabled. Everyone else uses PCs and are of no help. Anyone know what to do about this?

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Dani AI

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A few focused diagnostics to follow up on ’s DNS suggestion and ’s “index.html” symptom. The goal is to separate three causes that behave similarly on satellite links: name resolution, HTTP-level handling (proxy/cache/redirect), and link/TCP problems (MTU or fragmentation). Collecting a handful of terminal outputs will make the real cause obvious and give the administrator the evidence they need.

Run these from Terminal (replace example.com and <IP> with the real host):

nslookup example.com
dig +short example.com
traceroute example.com
curl -v -I http://example.com/
curl -v -I http://<IP>/
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -servername example.com

What to look for: nslookup/dig show which DNS server answered and the IP returned. curl -v shows HTTP status and any redirects (a proxy or filter often rewrites or blocks root requests but serves index.html). Requesting the raw IP isolates name resolution from application-layer behavior. openssl s_client reveals whether the TLS handshake completes or is interrupted (useful when secure sites fail).

Common fixes to try briefly and revert if the network is managed: temporarily set DNS to public servers (8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1) to rule out resolution filtering; check System Preferences > Network > Advanced > Proxies (WPAD/PAC can be invisible unless inspected); and test with a reduced MTU (satellite links often require ~1400) to rule out TCP fragmentation breaking some handshakes. If a temporary change fixes access, save the terminal outputs and the exact behavior (which URLs worked, which failed) and pass them to the network admin — that evidence points to either an upstream proxy/gateway problem or a DNS/cache issue rather than a hardware fault on the PowerBook.

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Member Avatar for NewMacUser

Update- if I type in index.html at the end of the address, I can access more websites. Still not all of the ones that I use, though, and no secure ones. Help!

-Grant

Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hello,

It sounds to me that there is a DNS problem on the computer. A quick way to check that is to go to a working computer, and ping the address of a site you are trying to reach (ping www.daniweb.com). Then, find out the IP numbers (lets say ) Go back to the mac, and in the browser window, type in the IP numbers. IF the site comes up, you have a DNS problem.

Check in the Network Properties tab of your computer to ensure it is properly setup, and that the DNS servers are correctly listed.

Christian

Member Avatar for NewMacUser

OK, after typing index.html after the all the websites I was trying to access for about a half an hour, everything started to work. Now I can get on everything, even secure sites. Weird. Thanks for the help.

-Grant

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