Connectivity Issues

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superrid

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I am having an issue with a computer in my office that I cannot figure out.

I have a broadband cable connection that I use to connect to my company's network in San Francisco through a VPN. The problem is that I cannot access the internet without being connected to the VPN. Well, that is not entirely accurate - I can browse by IP, but that is it, and it takes a long time for simple pages to load. Pages with any applets or streaming or anything past HTML 4 won't load.

The connection is shared with three other computers through a Linksys router, only one of which can access the internet without the VPN. All four computers have the same IP configs and nic settings. I have tried connecting each of the computers directly into the cable modem and get the same results - only one is able to connect to the internet without the VPN. The IP address for the cable modem is a static address, which shouldn't matter as the router should allow all four computers to share the same address.

With regards to the three that are having this issue, I can ping the local host, the default gateway, the external address of the cable modem, and all other computers on the local network both by IP and name without the VPN. I cannot ping the DNS servers for my ISP or any external server. Our cable modem has been switched out three times in the last three years due to other issues, but the problem has been the same regardless of which modem we have used.

Neither my ISP or network admin can figure out why this is happening. I am thinking there is a registry setting or policy that is responsible for the problem but I am not sure where to look. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to look or another place to check?
 
The router does have the ability to clone a MAC address, but I cannot access the admin functions for the router (the network admin will not grant me access).
 
superrid said:
The router does have the ability to clone a MAC address, but I cannot access the admin functions for the router (the network admin will not grant me access).

That sucks, I wanted to try something but I guess you can't. When you do a ipconfig /all on the computer that can connect to the internet without the VPN and the computers that can't what's the result look like or can you post them here or are you not allow to. I know most Admin are really strict about the security of their VPN.
 
Update

After a long delay, here is an update: I was able to take one of the computers that cannot connect to the internet and hooked it up to a different modem and router. The long and short of it is this: different equipment, same result.

I was able to ping everything up to the router and cable modem, but nothing after. I got into the router's configuration utility and was able to ping by IP and by name from the router. I looked at a bunch of settings in the registry for TCP/IP and made a few edits (all of which were recommended by the IT staff here). I restored the DNS settings for domains and hosts in the registry to factory defaults. Even after all of this, I still have the same problem.

Oh, and I did clone the MAC address of the computer to the modem as well (thanks for the reminder, Law). I have no filters set, no firewalls, nothing at all on the router that would keep me from connecting to the internet from this computer.

Anyone have any suggestions?
 
IP Configs

You are correct - I can't post them here. My admin would have my head if I did. Sorry.
 
This is a tough one, but I think DustynF might be right and that it could be a DNS issue from what you are explaining. You said all computer can ping other host inside the network up to the IP of the cable modem.

Can you ping this address 216.239.37.99 this is google website. And can you ping www.google.com
 
I can ping by IP, but cannot ping using the address. The command returns an error message that says the host could not be found.

I think Dustyn is correct as well. I have looked at all of the hardware backward and forward and nothing seems to be wrong. I am just wondering what is causing DNS to fail. The router is functioning as the DNS server, and I can ping by name and IP from the router's config utility, so it looks like the system is having an issue with DNS. Any suggestions?
 
If your DNS setting is pointing to the router, I would suggest using the IP address of your ISP DNS server instead of the router, this way you can by pass all the trouble that might be associated with that router. Sometime you might need to turn off DHCP on the router and do the IP and DNS manually from your computers.
 
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