my wi-fi connected laptop is suddenly saying "no internet access".
but it obviously is connecting to the home router by wi-fi, because it prints!
but browser cannot access websites, and dropbox does not sync.
I tried disconnecting and reconnecting, I tried restart, I tried a different user account.
please help.
okay, I think I fixed it.
On my desktop, I made a switch from automatic DNS to google public DNS . that was a few days ago.
Last night, the laptop started having this internet problem.
Now I switched the laptop as well to google public DNS, and it connects once again.
(after changing DNS, I got a prompt from ESET about whether this is a home network or a public one.)
I don't understand why changing the DNS on the laptop worked, but it did.
why can't I have different DNS on different devices?
does this mean that any PC that wants to connect to internet through my router will need to use google DNS?
The DNS is the translation of the IP addresses on the Internet. It sounds like your ISP had trouble with their DNS server/servers. I have used google's DNS servers several times when my ISP was having DNS issues. Your router shouldn't need to have the DNS changed.
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