Start.ca → Constant "Hmm. We?re having trouble finding that site." errors

Hi all,

My household has been getting a lot of this:

"Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.

We can’t connect to the server at ".................................."

If that address is correct, here are three other things you can try:

Try again later.
Check your network connection.
If you are connected but behind a firewall, check that Firefox has permission to access the Web."

This happens on ALL computer devices and pretty much every website....spontaneously throughout the day...however I found it more so at night, but not sure if there's a correlation. Upstairs, living room, and downstairs. Different browsers and personal computers. The only way to rectify this problem is to refresh it a couple of times and the websites load.

On going for a couple months now, maybe more. I have disconnected my modem several times in the past month. Disconnected router several times, and made sure firmware is up-to-date.

As I said before, the only solution to this is to refresh the page a couple of times and everything is fine...until I open a new tab...sometimes sites load in one go, and sometimes I get hit with the "We can't connect to the server at....." message.

What may be the cause of this? Googled around and it is probably DNS related? Has anyone here experienced this before?

Yes, if the DNS server for your area is experiencing issues you will have these kinds of issues. You can change it in your router and see if that fixes the issue. I recommend 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 as a test.

I appreciate the response! Thanks, I'll look into it with the ISP!

1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) YES
8.8.8.8 (Google) NO

what is your reasoning behind declaring No to 8.8.8.8?

I use the CIRA DNS servers. Super quick.

Well, a follow-up in case if anyone is referred to here by Google....

Seems to be the issue of my router. I have a Netgear Nighthawk R8000, further researching it's forums - it seems like plenty of people are having trouble with their DNS. The best solution right now is to downgrade to an older firmware update.

I also recommend using the CIRA Canadian Shield DNS service. They offer three levels of protection in their offering.

Pass.

CIRA logs and keeps all DNS queries, including domain, date and time, geolocation and IP address and keeps that data forever.

Google doesn't even do that.

Where do you see this? On their privacy policy they say they only keep it for 24 hours: »www.cira.ca/cybersecurit ··· /privacy

I see it in the same place you linked to.
While they "say" they only keep the data linked to your IP for 24 hours, they keep everything else permanently, and keep the IP address link for a variety of reasons at their sole discretion - including sharing it if and when necessary.

And besides... they're not that fast.

Taken as a whole, IMHO they're keeping logs. Period. Pass.

Looks like half the board have ties to government as well. I'm not a fan of government focused internet. I'm not a fan of Google either as they censor your searches based on their agenda.
Just sayin...

I ran them against all the other big DNS services and they came back the fastest of all of them. I'm on TS and TS hosts some of the servers for this so it was close in that way. Take a look at GRC's DNS Nameserver Performance Benchmark program. It seems to be quite through with the benchmarking.

Agreed - just run Adguard Home or Pihole on your own DNS server (raspberry pi or whatever) on cloudflare or quad9 DoH or DNS over TLS and be done with it.

Multiple possibilities.

For starters, isolate one or two specific URLs this happens on.

For DNS, try nslookup from the Windows CLI and see if it resolves properly.

If DNS resolves fine, try another web browser, preferably with a different rendering engine.

Try pinging the website in question, both by URL and by IP address.

Got another computer? Try it and see if the problem follows AT THE EXACT SAME TIME.

Got a phone with data? Turn on mobile hotspot, does the problem follow?

It's a PITA, but that's troubleshooting for you.

Regards