Weird Domain/IP Address Issue, Help Needed

R

redwolfe3

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 16, 2004
Messages
81
Hey all, have a really weird problem going on here.

For one of my classes, I need to access an online database of author works. The URL is:
http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/e/ehrafe/

Now, here's where things get weird. I have not been able to access this site from my laptop since last week. Today a friend of mine says he has had no problems at all. So, I confirm with another buddies laptop (both on the school network, both D620 laptops, everything is identical) and he can connect fine.

Now, here's the really weird part, my system can successfully ping the other server, and I can access the main site through the IP Address directly, but I can't access it all via the domain. The problem is, the domain is hard coded into pretty much every aspect of the site.

What I'm wondering is if anyone else has had a similar issue before. I have checked all main settings and I have tried both FireFox (2.0) and Internet Explorer (6.0) and the results are identical.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Yes, that was one of the first things I tried.

Likewise, I have cleared the cache on both web browsers (although, IE is used maybe once a month).

The weirdest part is that the laptop properly resolves the IP address of the server based on the domain if I ping the server. But, in every web browser it fails to connect.
 
What happens when you do a traceroute (or tracert under Windows) to the site?

What happens when you take your laptop to a different network?
 
Ok, some more weirdness. I just resolved the problem, but I'm not 100% sure how I did it.

The first thing I did was try to tracert the server, I couldn't access the full subdomain, but I could ping the parent subdomain (if that makes any sense). I tried pinging the direct subdomain from my desktop (which can connect to the site in question fine) and it worked fine for both.

As for different networks, I had tried this both from school and at home. It does the exact same thing at both places.

Now, here's where it gets weird/good. I was trying to decide what was consistent with all the failures. The main consistent factor is my laptop. But, as I thought about it further, there was one other constant, I was using Wireless Networks/My Wireless Adapter. I decided to try and plug in hard wired at home to see if that made any difference. After plugging in hard wire, Yahtzee!, it works. I then decide, just for S&G, to disable my wireless, then re-enable it and disconnect wired network. Bingo, everything is working fine now, I can hit the site and everything.

Now, here's the weird thing, I have restarted the system several times since this started, and I have disabled and re-enable the Wireless Adapter multiple times. For some reason, switching to wired and then back to wireless solved the problem... how it happened? I have no clue.
 
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