I Have Internet But I Can’t Surf: Why it Happens and Solutions

Why can’t I browse the Internet, but I do have a connection?

Having an Internet connection is the first step to be able to surf the Internet, but it is not the only thing we will need. On many occasions, a user can have a perfectly working Internet connection on their home WiFi router, but nevertheless, they cannot browse any web or use any type of service. In these cases where we do have an Internet connection, but we do not surf, the error can be in many parts of the network, because many factors come into operation in order to surf the Internet:

• Internet connection in the router : to be able to surf the Internet it is absolutely necessary to have an Internet connection contracted, or to connect to another network that is not ours (via cable or WiFi) that does have an Internet connection.
• Equipment connected via cable or WiFi to the router : before connecting to the Internet, we must connect to the home WiFi router, either via cable or also via WiFi.
• DHCP protocol for the router to provide us with an IP address, gateway and DNS servers.
• DNS protocol for domain name resolution.
• HTTP and HTTPS protocols for browsing the web.
• Applications (web browser) correctly installed.

The reason for having an Internet connection, but not browsing, can be very varied. For example, it is possible that we are connecting via WiFi in a location very far from the router, and, therefore, we have low coverage and very low speed, causing the web browser to show an error message when loading the different webs. This is very typical in public WiFi networks, where the signal from these networks is usually very low. It could also be the case that the WiFi network where we are connecting is completely collapsed and does not accept more wireless clients transmitting traffic, in this case, it is advisable to change WiFi access points to see if we have a higher bandwidth.

Other common problems are due to the router’s DHCP server, which is not able to provide us with an IP address because there are already many clients connected and it exceeds its IP addressing range, and it could even be the case that the WiFi router has the DHCP server disabled . Regarding the DNS servers, it is possible that the DHCP server has not provided us with DNS servers to use, for this reason, we cannot resolve the domain names of the different websites and we cannot access, the web browser will return an error.

Finally, we may have some kind of problem with the HTTP and HTTPS protocols, for example, a firewall preventing external communications, and even our web browser could have some kind of problem when it comes to working. Next, we are going to help you diagnose the problem of having an Internet connection, but not browsing, in order that you can solve this problem with the advice that we are going to give you.

This is all you should check on your network

In order to correctly diagnose the problem and see where the fault is in your network, we are going to explain step by step everything you must check and verify, from the physical connections and wiring, to the web browsers to use, going through different tests that we will have to carry out to verify that we actually have one problem or another. It is very important that you go step by step to discard the different problems (and solutions) that we can give, if you skip a step then you may not solve your problem because you have assumed that everything is correct, when there really is a problem and we have to fix it.

The first thing we must make sure is that we have an Internet connection in our home with any of the operators in your country, some users mistakenly believe that by buying only the latest model WiFi router with dual-band WiFi and high-speed Gigabit ports , plug it into the electric light and turn it on, we will already have an Internet connection, and this is not the case. In order to access the Internet we must contract the service with an operator in your region or country, in addition to this Internet connection, we will also have to use a router, but the latter is provided to us by the operators completely free of charge as part of the contracted service that we will have to pay monthly.

Check router lights

If we have contracted an Internet connection and at the service level everything is working correctly, in the router we should see a green light in the “Internet” or “WAN” part, indicating that an Internet connection has been established and that we can use the service without any problem. On the front of the router is where we will find all the status LEDs of the equipment, the router’s power LED, the Internet status LED, the phone status (if you have VoIP), the LAN status and also the network status. WiFi and USB ports, if our router has them.

Sometimes there is a specific fault LED that turns red, indicating that there is no synchronization or that we are not receiving power from the OLT (if we use FTTH), for example, in the ZTE F680 router we have the «LOS» LED to indicate this problem.

In this case, to verify that Internet connectivity is correct, we must look at the Internet status LED. Green means that everything is correct, and red means that there is some kind of problem and you have no service.

If the Internet light is red, then the problem is with the Internet connection and you will need to call your operator.

In case the Internet connection is correct and the LED lights of the router indicate that it is, we will check other aspects.

Look at the connectivity of our PC to the router

Once we know that the Internet connection is correct, we have to verify if our PC is correctly connected. Computers and laptops can be connected to the router in different ways:

• Ethernet network cable : we will connect our computer by network cable, from the Ethernet network card to one of the router’s LAN ports. Normally these LAN ports are yellow, although it will depend on the manufacturer of the router and the design of the specific model. The important thing is to connect the network cable and check if the status LED of that specific port turns green, otherwise, it is possible that we have not connected it correctly or the network cable is in bad condition.
• WiFi : we can connect with our desktop or laptop computer via WiFi to the router, both in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. To connect we will have to look for the wireless networks around us, choose our WiFi network name, enter the access password, and we will have access to the local network and the Internet via WiFi with our equipment.

Once we have connected to our router via WiFi or cable, it is necessary to know if we have correctly obtained the IP address, mask, default gateway and also the DNS servers. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Windows icon and put “cmd” in the browser, to launch the command prompt and execute commands. The command that we must execute in Windows to show us all the IP information of the computer is the following:

ipconfig /all

Once executed, we can see this information:

Here we can see the IPv4 address, the default gateway (our router) and also the DNS servers that it has provided us. If it comes out completely empty, it means that the router’s DHCP server is not working, is disabled or you are not physically connected (either via cable or WiFi) to the router, so you should review the connectivity first.

Once we have obtained the IP address, we are going to check if we have communication with the router correctly, for this, we simply put the following command in the console:

ping IP_puerta_de_enlace_predeterminada

In our case, we would execute “ping 10.11.1.1” to verify that there is communication with the router correctly.

As you have seen, there is communication with the router correctly. In the event that you have obtained IP address via DHCP, but you cannot ping the router, then it is possible that your firewall is incorrectly configured and is preventing network traffic, it is also possible that we have very little WiFi coverage and we are not able to communicate with the router.

Now we have to check if we have communication with the Internet, to verify that from our computer to any Internet host there is communication and there are no problems.

Did we get to the DNS servers?

Once the communication with the router has been verified, it is now recommended to ping the DNS servers provided by the router. In case the DNS servers are the router itself, then we have already done the previous check and they should work, but we are going to carry out an additional check to see if we can reach any DNS server on the Internet, that is, if we have network traffic with the Internet and we have no problem.

In order to check if we have Internet connectivity, all we have to do is ping Google or Cloudflare DNS, as you can see below:

We are capable of reaching Internet DNS servers without any problem, therefore, we rule out connectivity problems to the local network and also to the Internet, because everything is working correctly.

If you cannot ping these DNS servers (but you can ping the router), then the Internet connection has a problem, check the router’s status LEDs again and you can verify that they are red. It is also possible that the Internet connection has not yet been established and for this reason the router’s status LED is green, when we really do not have an Internet connection.

Check that the DNS servers resolve the domains

Now we have to check if the DNS resolution is working correctly, one thing is that we have communication with the DNS servers through the typical ping, and quite another that it is resolving the domains correctly. If the DNS servers that the router has provided us or those that are configured in the router do not work, we will not be able to navigate the Internet because we will not be able to resolve the different domains.

To check if the DNS servers are resolving the domains correctly, we can execute two commands. The first is to ping a domain like www.redeszone.net, to check if it resolves the domain and takes us to the destination:

As you have seen, it has resolved the domain correctly and we managed to connect with it without problems. However, we are going to do a further check using the nslookup tool. The nslookup tool allows us to know the IP address of a certain domain using the DNS servers, in addition, it will also show us which DNS servers it has used to reach that IP address.

The operation of this tool is very simple, we simply have to put the following order:

nslookup www.redeszone.net

In our case, it indicates different IP addresses of the web, because we have a CDN to serve the content from different places.

As you have seen, the domain resolves us correctly, therefore, at the DNS level everything is correct.

If in your case you cannot ping a domain and we get an error when doing an nslookup, then you should check the DNS servers configured as follows:

• Change the DNS on the router : access the router with the default gateway, go to the WAN section and modify the DNS servers to use, our recommendation is to use those of Google (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) . If no DNS servers appear on the WAN, check to see if they are on the LAN. Depending on the router it could be in one zone or another.
• Change the DNS on the PC : if the router does not allow us to modify the DNS servers or we do not know how to do it, we can always change them on the PC to use those specifically. We have to go to «Windows / Control Panel / Network and Shared Resources Center / Change adapter configuration», now we right click on the network card of our team and «Properties», we double click on «Internet Protocol version 4 »and we put the DNS manually, as you can see here:

Now we will have the DNS changed, we try again to ping and nslookup to any website, as we have taught you before, and it should work correctly and without problems.

Check the status of the web browser

If all the previous checks have been successful, the last thing we should do is check the web browser that we are using. Our recommendation is to use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, both browsers are the two most used. In the event that we cannot navigate with these browsers, we should check the following aspects:

• The Windows firewall is blocking the program : it is possible that the Windows firewall is blocking the Internet access of the web browser, to rule out that this is the problem, it is best to disable it completely. We have to go to «Windows / Control Panel / Windows Defender Firewall», in the left section we can see an option called «Activate or deactivate the Windows Defender firewall», we enter here and disable it in private and public networks.

• We have configured a Proxy in the browser : it is possible that we have configured a proxy server in the web browser, and this proxy server is not available, therefore, it could be blocking all traffic. Depending on the web browser used, you will have to access the “network” section and verify that you do not use any proxy to connect to the Internet.

If none of these aspects is the culprit, our recommendation is that you restore the web browser to factory settings in case we have made a wrong advanced configuration, and it is preventing us from browsing the Internet normally.

Conclusions

A very common failure is having an Internet connection, but not being able to browse the web, as you have seen, we must check different aspects in order to verify that everything is working well, from the Internet connection itself to the web browser, that could well be the culprit. In addition, we should also check the DNS servers that we are using because they could be the culprits that we do not have the possibility of browsing the Internet, as we cannot resolve the domain names.

Regarding DNS servers, our recommendation is that you use those of Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1), because they are very fast, efficient, and do not usually block download web pages content, something that the DNS servers of the main operators do block. However, in recent times, operators block this type of website with other more aggressive methods, therefore, a change of DNS servers is not enough to be able to access blocked websites.

We hope that with this complete step-by-step guide you can diagnose the error you have, and you can solve it to browse the Internet without problems.