[SOLVED] Cannot access Mario Boards or Mario Wiki on my home WiFi

Jackie Frost

That’s more like it! Alright! Jackie rules!
Pronouns
She/her
MarioWiki
MiracleDinner
I have been experiencing an issue for around a month now (it started on the night of the Mario Awards) that I am unable to connect to Super Mario Boards or Super Mario Wiki on my home WiFi. This affects all my devices connected to my home WiFi. My cellular data on my smartphone is unaffected (including if I tether to my PC), as is any WiFi connection other than the one in my home. Another workaround is to use a VPN (or at least ProtonVPN). No websites other than Super Mario Boards and Super Mario Wiki are affected.

Attempting to connect to either website in a browser times out and running "ping www.marioboards.com" in a terminal will report:
miracledinner@[hostname]:~$ ping www.marioboards.com
PING marioboards.com (74.50.124.63) 56(84) bytes of data.
^C
--- marioboards.com ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 5111ms
 
have you asked other people in your house if they hate mario
In case this was serious, no I'm pretty sure my dad wouldn't block this site
 
So weirdly, it seems as if I do still get push notifications on my desktop even when disconnected from the VPN even though the site itself cannot load in a browser.
 
So it's effecting all devices in your home. That means it is probably an issue with either your router or your internet provider (ISP).

Here's some ideas:
- Turn off your router. Wait 30sec. Turn it back on. See if that works
- Check if it is a DNS issue. DNS is the technology that converts www.marioboards.com to its IP address when you try to connect. Go into your Internet Settings on a computer. Find the DNS settings page. It should be set to automatic, with the fields greyed out. Set it to manual and put in these two for primary and secondary respectively: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4. These are Google's public DNSes and they run consistently. Now go into the command prompt (Windows search bar -> cmd). Type in 'ipconfig /flushdns'. Now try to connect to Marioboards. If you CAN then you've confirmed it's a DNS issue. Go into your router, find its DNS settings and change them to Google's there. Then try connecting on your other devices. You may need to run flushdns on those as well.
- If you still can't connect, check firewall settings on your router. If there's any listed for Mario Boards / Wiki, delete them. Now try to connect
- Check if the website is IP blocked. Try using a VPN to try to connect to the website. If you don't have a VPN there are probably ones with free trials. You could also try a Web proxy. I will say a lot of them are sketchy websites and I don't know which ones are good these days. If this step works then contact the Admins here and get them to undo the IP block
- If you still can't connect, contact your ISP / Internet Provider because it sounds like it is on their end
 
Different browser/antivirus??
I'm not running an antivirus, and yes the issue absolutely persists between all browsers and devices

- Turn off your router. Wait 30sec. Turn it back on. See if that works
Okay, I could try this when I have time and nobody else is using WiFi.

- Check if it is a DNS issue. DNS is the technology that converts www.marioboards.com to its IP address when you try to connect. Go into your Internet Settings on a computer. Find the DNS settings page. It should be set to automatic, with the fields greyed out. Set it to manual and put in these two for primary and secondary respectively: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4. These are Google's public DNSes and they run consistently. Now go into the command prompt (Windows search bar -> cmd). Type in 'ipconfig /flushdns'. Now try to connect to Marioboards. If you CAN then you've confirmed it's a DNS issue. Go into your router, find its DNS settings and change them to Google's there. Then try connecting on your other devices. You may need to run flushdns on those as well.
I use Debian (and my phone is iOS) so I couldn't replicate your steps exactly but I believe I did the equivalent steps of setting DNS to 8.8.8.8 8.8.8.4 and flushing DNS cache, and this seems to have no effect.

- Check if the website is IP blocked. Try using a VPN to try to connect to the website. If you don't have a VPN there are probably ones with free trials. You could also try a Web proxy. I will say a lot of them are sketchy websites and I don't know which ones are good these days. If this step works then contact the Admins here and get them to undo the IP block
ProtonVPN works, I can access Mario Boards on my home WiFi through this VPN.
 
Issue is somehow fixed, i can't say why as i didn't do anything
 
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