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[gspeig]

Ok, I thought I was going bonkers...LOL.  I'm having the SAME problems.  It's crazy because it's on two different computers.  One is a Desktop PC running Windows XP and the other is a MacbookPro laptop.  The laptop is wireless and the desktop is connected via gig card.  On MANY occasions, www.facebook.com sends me either to MySpace.com or to some page with WindowsLive.  I also noticed just tonight that searches ended up on MySpace.com through facebooks search engine...yeah, that's a wild one there.  I also have a PC laptop with Windows 7 on it, but I don't remember if I had this problem on that laptop.

This seems to have only mainly been happening with facebook, as that is my most visited site.  Ususally, clearing the cache on the PC, shutting down the browswer fixes it.  A DNS flush on the Mac, clearing the cache, shutting down the browser (and about 2 minutes) usually cures the Macbook. Website forwarding is usually only used for ISPs that prompt you to pay for their wireless or some authentication scree...but that's not what's happening here.

So, the question is WHY?  Why is this happening?  I wouldn't imagine that this something that's in the DNS of our internet service providers (I have Comcast) becuase I've always had comcast, and this has never happened before I got this router.  I've been on networks all over, airports, different cities, etc, and I've never seen this in all of my 15 years of internet use.  I've had two linksys routers before, both of which gave me excellent service.  I only bought this new Gigabit Router because I wanted faster transfers between my computers, and the best wireless performance for my XBox360, PS3 and Wii. 

I love Cisco/Linksys products, and I'm very satisfied with the performance of my router...excellent speeds, NO interruption in services, it's been a beast!....until I try to visit Facebook too many times and it sends me other places.  

Linksys, please try to find a solution to this problem.

Thanks

G

[iso70x]

I've only had the WRT160N for 2 weeks, and already I've experienced this too.  Such a bizarre problem, but it's got to be the router as nothing else has changed on my home network and this has only started happening the past week.  It's mainly facebook.com that suffers, and is redirecting to one of google's servers.  I also had a problem last night where vmware.com was resolving to an incorrect address that just showed some XML.  It seems that once a client has picked up the "bad" ip address from the router, it is then cached on that machine for a while so the site remains unavailable until the record is refreshed.  Only a ipconfig /flushdns fixes it.  It seems intermittent, the router mainly returns correct ip addresses, but occasionally will go through a period where it returns the wrong ip.  These incorrect lookups always seem to be from sites that have already been visited, so I'm assuming that the router caches DNS lookups and this is possibly where the problem is occurring.  I tried connecting directly to the modem last night and it was fine, but because this only happens intermittently, it's not possible to conclude anything 100%.

While this problem is happening, doing an nslookup, then changing the server target to the isps DNS server confirms that the router is returning one address, while the ISP's is returning a completely different ip.

Next time it happens, I will capture all the command prompt output and post. Hopefully a future firmware will resolve this issue?

[Client_No.9]

Just wanted to provide everyone with an update on this. A few months ago I switched my DNS from my ISP over to Google DNS. Since then I have seen this problem significantly decline, it has only happened once or twice since then. I am sure that the problem lies within the DNS system. Basically, someone is either poisoning DNS routes or has their Content Caching system messed up. Most of the major ISP's now employ systems that will steer you to a recommended site if you type in an invalid URL. They get paid to do this by those companies that they redirect to. In any event, the problem is not with the Linksys Routers. All they do is pass along the DNS settings inherited via DHCP from your ISP. Once that is done they are basically out of the DNS loop and do not play a role in address resolution outside of simply routing IP packets to and fro.

To use Google DNS, log into your router and put in the following IP Addresses for your DNS.

Primary: 8.8.8.8

Secondary: 8.8.4.4

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

So far it has been working quite well.

C.

[amo13]

Well i have the exact same problem with my WRT320N, and here is another thread about this problem with WRT320N.

http://forums.linksysbycisco.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Routers&message.id=165694

[amo13]

Where and how do you use the Google DNS?

[iso70x]

@Client_No.9

The fix you suggest (enter google's DNS addresses into the router) didn't work for me.  The whole thing about ISP's DNS being poisoned, or content caching being to blame is simply not true, it's an issue with the router's internal DNS server/cache.

The problem is caused by a computer on a home network using the router itself as a DNS server.  Whenever the router is used to resolve DNS, there is a chance that bad lookups will be experienced by the client PCs.  Whenever any Pc on my network picks up an ip address from the router via DHCP, it will also pick up a list of DNS servers to use.  This list will usually consist of:

<router ip>

<ISP DNS server 1>

<ISP DNS server 2>

All your fix will do is change this to:

<router ip>

<Google DNS server 1>

<Google DNS server 2>

The router is still being used as the main DNS server by all my computers, and the DNS caching issue still occurs.

The correct way to fix it is to manually configure *just the DNS addresses* on the client PCs themselves, not the router.  After doing this, my PCs only use

<ISP DNS server 1>

<ISP DNS server 2>

In windows, this is done via the control panel -> networking options.  Instead of setting to "Obtain DNS server address automatically", you use "Use the following DNS server addresses", then enter your ISP's DNS servers. 

Everything works fine now.  Although this manual DNS fix works, it's not ideal for laptops as whenever you use it on a remote network, this setting needs to be changed back again.  A better fix is to disable the DHCP server on the router entirely and use another device on your network for this purpose.  I have a FreeNAS box that stays on 24/7, and I simply added the DHCP server package to it, and that now dishes out IPs on my LAN, except that it never passes the router's ip as an available DNS server, only the ISP DNS.  

Eventually, Linksys will get the new firmware out, and I hope it will of fixed this.  It's a fairly critical problem imo, as a lot of novice users simply won't know how to resolve it.  It's a shame the router's DHCP server always passes the router's ip address as a DNS server, there is no way to disable it sadly.

[jamerz3294]

I just bought a Linksys Router, and have had the same experiewnce! Glad to see I wasn't crazy? I solve it by cleatring out all my Cache, History and Cookies, then getting out of the browser, and then going back in.

[amo13]

Well that wont work for more than some minutes or hours if you are lucky. You have to manually insert your ISPs DNS settings for your network adapter.

[White_Wolf]

There is a piece of malware floating around that is writing values to the Windows HOSTS file as well. This might not be everyone's issues but at the least it is worth having a look for. Run Malwarebytes program and it picks it out with no issue

[amo13]

I just read in this forum about this problem.

(Mod note: Edited post for guideline compliance. Thanks!)