Internet dropping for some programs

[Tony Baechler]

On 10/8/2015 9:26 PM, Scott Blair wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS. Lately the Internet drops out. But not on
> all programs. All the browsers just sit trying to resolve host.


That sounds like a DNS lookup issue.  What is the contents of 
/etc/resolv.conf?  Just for fun, what if you replace /etc/resolv.conf with 
the following lines:

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

If that doesn't immediately help, try a reboot, but it shouldn't be 
necessary.  Also, you might want to do the following if the above resolves 
the problem:

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

It could be the router or DHCP server, but it sounds like the Internet works 
normally except for resolving DNS lookups.  What happens if you go to the 
following in your browser?

http://173.194.112.23/

If that doesn't work, it isn't a DNS issue, so I would start looking at your 
router configuration.  However, since everything else works and your browser 
sits there and can't resolve the host, it's most likely a DNS problem.  Is 
there any program which works normally on the Internet and doesn't have the 
issue?

In other words, you mention the browser and Thunderbird.  You didn't mention 
which browser, but if it's Firefox, they are both Mozilla products.  I don't 
see why that would matter unless Mozilla does something weird which your 
router doesn't like.  Can you install system updates, for example?  If it's 
a DNS or router issue, nothing should work, so you shouldn't be able to 
download any packages.  If that works but Mozilla products don't, maybe 
start Firefox and Thunderbird in safe mode just in case.  If none of the 
above makes any obvious difference, I'm out of ideas.