As a followup to my last post, here’s one of my Flickr Pages in both Safari 3 (left) and Firefox 2 (right). As you can see, Safari just won’t load the images. Where Firefox had no problem. The error listed in Safari’s Activity Window is, “Can’t find host”.
I’ve discover that this is not just an issue with Safari. In Leopard, I’m having problems with all of Apple’s applications that talk to the internet (Safari, Mail, Dashboard Widgets). Even though my connection to the internet is strong, all Apple apps have intermittent connectivity.
Is anyone else having this problem?
UPDATE (11.05.07): Thanks to a comment by Matt Smith, my connection problem is fixed… for the most part. I let the migration assistant bring over my network settings, but it apparently didn’t bring everything over. I was missing some DNS Server information (in the Network Preference Pane). Once I replaced those numbers things started working properly, almost. I still have some occasional connection problems, but they are much less frequent, and they appear to be more related to my router. Although everything is (almost) working, I think we’ll still be seeing an update from Apple on this issue. It’s odd that only Apple applications seem to need those numbers.
Did you happen to have something like SafariStand or other plugins installed?
Maybe it’s the firewall?
Had the same problem. Somehow, the DNS server Safari was using (in Network Preferences) was incorrect and generic. I typed in some DNS numbers from the OpenDNS people and Safari was back to it’s old speedy self. BTW, I did an archive and install. And the installation also didn’t copy forward the router number for my work network setup.
Josh, I did have some plugins installed, but I removed them prior to migrating over from my G5. I’ve tried with the firewall off and on, it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Matt, that may have helped. I compared my network preferences on my new machine to my old one. There was some missing DNS servers. I’ve put them in, and things seem to be better. It’s hard to tell since the problem is intermittent.
If that was the problem, it seems strange that it would make some of my email accounts go offline. I have several accounts hosted on one server, and only some of them have been acting up. It also seems strange the firefox and other non-Apple internet applications have functioned properly.
I also noticed that Leopard seems to have added it’s own info into network preferences that it won’t let me remove. It added my router as a DNS server, and my ISP as a search domain. Neither of those are listed on my old machine, and they are grayed out, so I can’t edit them.
I’ll update this post if the problem stays fixed.
Thanks for the great suggestions.
I’ve got a clean install and have a lot of internet problems. My G4 PowerBook will connect to my Airport Express for about 30 seconds and then loose it. It can’t find any of the 10 surrounding WiFi networks anymore. This is pretty bad here. I’m very handy with Apple-software but can’t seem to find the problem very easily. Hardware seems ok. I’m hoping for a quick update on Apple’s part.
I too have experienced “intermittent” Leopard connectivity on 2GHz Dual G5.
Ditto on the connectivity with new Leopard installed over factory installed Tiger on a Macbook. I have a Linksys WRT300N used in auto-mode that worked flawlessly with Tiger, but now frequently drops my connection after this new OS install. It shows full signal in the Airport Icon but message in Safari 3 is “Not connected to Internet.” I ran diagnostics but ultimately have to restart the computer whenever this occurs which is frustratingly frequent. This is a major pain in the drain. Also getting an occasional mouse freeze. Any ideas? Or, is this OS as bug-ridden as MS Vista? How does one uninstall it?
Scratching me noggin in Temecula (where’s that?),
Keith
I also have intermittent internet and mail accounts that go offline all the time. Very frustrating!
I’m having this same not “connected to internet” problem — it seems to be worse with certain sites like the new ebay beta. don’t know why that is.
same problems. flickr drops connections and pictures don’t load. certain websites suffer from “can’t find ____ server”, etc. All in all, very frustrating and it seems as though there’s not much you can do. I’m hoping a very quick update will alleviate these problems.
!!Unix Executable Modem Scripts ? HELP !!
(1) CDMA USB Modem script dose not work with Leopard !
(2) Missing Sync keeps installing new connections and they do not unmount after the cell dose Im up to 7 new connections now all named the same-thing . Missing Sync is up-to date .
fssalaska, I can’t comment on the modem scripts, but I can tell you that Missing Sync is not yet compatible with Leopard. See this page on the Mark/Space site.
What exactly are the correct DNS settings that fixed the Leopard connectivity problems? I do not know the Open DNS people that Matt Smith refers to, and it sounds like others are having problems. Some specifics may be helpful to many. Thanks.
Mike, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) should be able to give you the correct DNS Server numbers. If they can’t, you can get numbers from opendns.com, which is the service that Matt is referring to (it’s free). I’ve never used Open DNS, so I can’t comment on their reliability. Just now I went to opendns.com and they had these numbers listed:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
The numbers that your ISP should be able to provide you would be in a similar format as these from Open DNS.
Under the Apple pull-down menu, select “System Preferences…”, then click on “Network”. From the Network Preference Pane, click on “Advanced…”, then click on the “DNS” tab. On this screen you’ll be able to enter the DNS servers.
I used the numbers from my ISP. Entering them solved most of my connectivity problems. I hope this helps.
Thanks for the tip Paul. It appears to have worked for now. Ever since installing Leopard, my browsing has been very intermittent. Sometimes it is working great, and other times it seems to be continuously loading and hanging. So far, so good. Much appreciated.
are these DNS entries relevant if I’m connecting through a router? doesn’t the router handle all the dns? (my dns right now is the router’s ip -192.168.1.1)
Chris_n, you should still put in the additional DNS numbers. My router is also listed as the first number, but I had to add numbers provided by my ISP to reliably connect to the internet.
paul, thanks for the reply. i was under the impression that the router would just forward the DNS entries to each computer.
Has anyone gotten in touch with apple and found out if they are aware of the problem and if they are working on it.
I have all of the above symptoms.
1. Intermittent internet
2. Loss of signal from airport extreme
3. When i do have good signal i sometimes lose internet ability
4. mouse freezes up sometimes
5. internet works for a short period of time then drops out
6. programs sometimes take a while to start
All happened after leopard was installed.
There has to be something that they are doing about this. Please keep posting any information you guys find out. Sorry nothing new here.
Yes, I’m seeing the same problem. It appears that hosts with multiple subdomains (the.subdomain.something.com) are the ones that fail to load. The same pages load fine in Firefox, as well as Safari 2.x running on a different machine in my home, so I’m hoping this will be fixed by Apple.
Major obvious issues with this here – fixing it resolved others as well.
This was an issue on a G4 iBook as well as an Intel Mini, though NOT on my Intel iMac on the same network. All 3 are wireless connections.
I noticed it mostly with Safari all of a sudden not seeing a host, but I could open another browser and I get there….I likened it to “kicking” the dns to get the ip. Another issue that I hadn’t connected was constant SLOW sending of email. I tried adding OpenDNS as well as my own dns entries, but I couldn’t shake the automatic addition of my router’s ip as the first DNS, which was grayed out could not be deleted. I tried doing a named network setup as opposed to auto and it LOOKED like it worked, but would still pick up and add the router ip after I saved and closed.
The fix (for me) was to go to a named network setup, then MANUALLY configuring the IPV4 (under tcp/ip tab). When you switch from dhcp to manual, it helpfully keeps the subnet and gateway IP’s for you. I then simply added my new fixed IP. I then set up DNS for OpenDNS and saved the setup.
ALL my connection problems are resolved, mail is fast, and the machine in general is much snappier. I suspect that there were a number of other issues behind the scenes slowing things down that have been since resolved.
I’m going to fixed manually assigned IP’s on my whole net.
Hey, can someone please HELP ME! I have a ibook g4 and I recently upgraded from tiger to Leopard. My wireless internet service worked fine until I upgraded. My computer still recognizes the network i’m trying to connect to but when I try to connect, it either says “connection time out” or “connection failed.” I know it’s not a problem with the network because my husband can connect to the same network on his macbook pro and on a psp. I know the problem has something to do with leopard. If anyone has experienced this or has any possible solutions on how to fix this please help.
Thanks in advance
My internet connections work fine until upgrading to Leopard and then any application which is accessing the internet such as mail and safari won’t work correctly after a couple of hours resulting in the rotating ‘beach ball’. I have to force quite and boot up every 2 hours or so
Ken!! Got your same problem!!! Any way to fix it! I hate this bug so much!!
For the record. Macbook, 2GB ram, 160gb HD, Clean Leopard install, it’s the second time now…
My listed DNS number is the exact same one that Chris_N mentions above (192.168.1.1). Hopefully plugging in some new ones will help? I am not very computer-savvy for anything this advanced and am pretty confused. Can anyone walk me through it?
I’m having the same issues as Kaygrant describes. At random, my connection goes down, and the base station becomes undiscoverable. When it comes back on, and I try to connect to my preferred network, I get ‘connection failed’ or ‘connection time out’.
I just called Apple, and they claim this is not common. They sent me some testing documents so I could troubleshoot the problem, but I doubt it will help. Seems Leopard is the issue.
Also, I did not experience this when i first installed it. Maybe it started with a recent update? I can’t seem to pinpoint the start of these issues.
I just changed from Tiger to Leopard also. I went to my wireless broadband ISP and tried a different “Apple” friendly card. Same problem……it just times out and won’t connect. Now I’m back on Tiger and it works……..
Has anyone been able to fix this problem?
great stuff – this worked for me – all those greyed out DNS numbers appeared to have gone missing when i created a new ethernet connection, then deleted the new one (that having failed), so i just added these 2 numbers, and i am online at work – it has been working fine on (slower at home mind u) wireless everywhere
Installed leopard on my g5…….Internet has gone haywire!..unbeilivable– slower than dial-up!
Glad to find out that others are having the same problem. I think this happened with a recent update. My intel G5 is new and came with Leopard. I experience the intermittent internet connection with both Safari and Firefox. I lose the iTunes store, my cnn homepage, my mail program etc. my internet connection is fine. I’m typing from my husband’s G4 powerbook – he got a new ibook intel and it is not having the problems I am on my desk top. I can’t even investigate the problem on my computer or send a report to apple. I’m very annoyed. I don’t see any solutions. My computer is so new that I’ll be contacting the apple store and apple very soon. i want to hear solutions. I will keep googling for answers. There has to be some out there.
A good but technical discussion of the problem can be found at http://blog.jungledisk.com/2007/10/31/leopard-dns-issues-and-work-around/
But Apple needs to get engaged on this issue.
Paul’s advice (11/13/2007) worked for me. I am using Mac OS X version 10.3.9 on an iBook G4, using Airport and a D-Link router, and had been virtually unable to use the Internet since the last time I updated the software about three weeks ago (I kept receiving the “cannot find the server” message). I thought it was Safari and tried to download Firefox but unfortunately Mozilla was one of the sites I couldn’t access! I finally got Firefox through a third party site but it had the same problem as Safari on the identical sites.
I spent hours researching the problem on my Windows computer before coming across the Open DNS number solution. This was something simple enough for me to try, and it worked. Thank you so much.
Does anyone have any updates as to whether Apple is aware of this problem and have a permanent fix for it?
I have similar issues. I have an 07 Pro 15″ 2.16. It came with Tiger and had no issues with it. I had wanted to get time machine to save my work so I bought Leopard. Leopard worked fine for about two weeks until the updates came out for it. After the updates I could not connect the internet except for email.
1. Email and Skype work fine
2. iTunes won’t connect
3. Safari and Firefox won’t connect
4. Widgets won’t connect
5. software updates won’t connect
6. I have used time machine to retore, but after any restart I am right back to where I started
7. I have not installed the new updates again and it still happens after a restart
Did anyone find a way to fix this? It doesn’t matter what connection I am using, LAN, wireless, work or home it doesn’t matter its all the same. Were there any fixes for this?
We started having internet connection problems every 15 min or so, until I uninstalled Norton Anti virus. Now it is staying connected.
@Brad — Your solution worked perfectly!! This was driving me crazy!
Simply change your tcp/ip setting to manual
if you are on a linksys enter something like
192.168.1.101 or whatever your Static ip will be for your home network.
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Router 192.168.1.1
go to the DNS tab and enter the OpenDNS IP addresses listed previously
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Now the part that drove me crazy. Click ok and lock your network settings otherwise if you leave the airport connection on automatic every time you turn your airport on and off leopard puts back in the default greyed out dns entries provided by your ISP.
Hope this helps.
i have the same problem with Mark W, just happened yesterday.
i’m connected to Broadband wireless USB modem.
two days ago, i can browse internet via Camino and Safari, running smooth on both programs.
but starting yesterday, i dont know is it related or not, problems seem occured after i install little snitch. then i un-installed the program.
however, the problem is still with me. I only can browse with Camino, receive email from Apple Mail.
other programs are not working; Safari, Entourage, Adium, front row, iPhoto, all could not connect to internet; just like i’m not connected to internet at all.
please helpppp!!
I’m sorry to say that the solution i Posted above works but still intermittent connectivity is experienced. I have been on the phone with apple and will post a solution if we can get this resolved. Looks like an archive and install is what I’ll end up having to do.
Dear Tim,
i already tried to put open DNS on DNS configuration, but it still didnt work.
i’m connected to the internet, i can browse using Camino, i can receive and send email using Apple Mail. but other programs is not connected at all.
i tried to ping same website that i can open with Camino in Terminal, but the ping reply is always “Host is Down”
i dont know what’s the problem, can you help me?
I have a MacBook Pro, and I have just installed the Leopard software, and now my Airport will not seem to connect to any wireless servers. It simply says “Airport Searching” when I click on the grey airport symbol in my menu bar.
I also am trying to reach the internet through a mobile USB card that I previously used when I had Tiger working, and now when I try to connect to that it says “internet connection failed”
I don’t know if this relates, but my macbook pro won’t load webpages, i can connect to skype and it’s very fast, but that is all, i have just relocated to moscow and it worked fine before i got here, any ideas anyone, it’s been soooooo frustrating and i have entered new numbers in the preferences but don’t really know what i am doing anymore. please help!!!!