How-To Geek

Our router, admittedly an old D-Link in a home office environment, firmware updated 3-4 yrs ago, suddenly refuses to connect to our tax prep software service. I have to disconnect from the router and connect directly through the cable modem. Over the years that we have used this router and this configuration this is the only website that causes me problems.

This persists with all computers on this router.

We have reset to factory settings. That doesn't work and it takes a good days work to get it reconfigured again. We're not techies here so it takes us a bit longer to do that while still trying to get some work done.

Suggestions for other places to look; registry, lookup tables, etc?

Thanks

I'd change to the GOOGLE's Public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) to rule out your ISP's DNS blocking. Next thing to look at would be your HOSTS file and make sure it isn't blocked there.

One easy DNS test, run TRACEROUTE followed by the URL for the Tax Service from a command line and see if it is even found. If not, either the DNS or HOSTS file would be the first to look at.

For instance, if it was TurboTax, do this :

==============
C:\Users\Irv>tracert www.turbotax.com

Tracing route to turbotax.com [206.108.40.109]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * *
================

or

===================
C:\Users\Irv>tracert turbotax.intuit.com

Tracing route to turbotax.intuit.com [206.108.40.109]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 *
================

or use PING

==================
C:\Users\Irv>ping turbotax.intuit.com

Pinging turbotax.intuit.com [206.108.40.109] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 206.108.40.109: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=233
Reply from 206.108.40.109: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=233
Reply from 206.108.40.109: bytes=32 time=111ms TTL=233
Reply from 206.108.40.109: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=233

Ping statistics for 206.108.40.109:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 99ms, Maximum = 111ms, Average = 102ms
================

Irv S.

Irv S - I'm not certain how/why it worked, but for the moment I am able to connect to my tax service. Computer did not know what Tracert was. I pinged the service and got no response. Did that a couple of times. Then checked out the link by "warlock" and decided not to do that at the moment. Then, plugged in the url for my tax service and went directly to their home page. We'll see how long that lasts!

Thanks much for the time/effort you put in with the various examples! I do appreciate that.