I've just installed FreeBSD on a Dell D620 laptop, the wifi does not work but the ethernet does. Web sites such as google.com and linuxquestions.org do work, but the default firefox web page and some others do not. I know they are up because I can connect on my windoze machine. i'm posting this in the linux networking forum because i had the same problem on another laptop running ubuntu 7.10 and pclinuxos 2007. I have enough experience that I can translate possible solutions from linux to unix.
I googled the problem and found that the lastest linux kernel had issues with some older routers and tcp window scaling, I tried "sysctl net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0" on my BSD machine to turn off tcp window scaling, i didn't mess with any options such as maximum window size or default size. it didn't work, the web pages still will not load, i tried an nslookup of google.com and then and got

$ nslookup
> google.com
Server: 192.168.0.1
Address: 192.168.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 64.233.167.99
Name: google.com
Address: 64.233.187.99
Name: google.com
Address: 72.14.207.99

> en-us.start.mozilla.com
;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.
;; Connection to 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1) for en-us.start.mozilla.com failed: connection refused.

any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks in advance

seems like its a dns error. en-us.start.mozilla.com eventually redirects to www.l.google.com (74.125.47.103) which your computer can access you said. Have you tried using a different nameserver then the one you are currently using?

Well, idk what I did. I was trying to find out what my router username and password were (it's my parents) so i could change the default DNS server and i did some traceroutes to see what server i was using and it started to be able to trace en-us.start.mozilla.com. maybe the dns server switched automatically or something. thanks for the help, verdeboy2k. If it happens again and my dad can remember the password to the router i'll definitely try switching servers. I doubt it will be a problem at school though. anyway, thanks again!

The router probably refreshed its DNS cache. If it ever happens again just change /etc/resolv.conf to point to your ISP's DNS server instead of your router. If that doesn't fix the problem, try hooking the computer directly to the modem.

Since you are getting a Non-authoritative answer I assume that you are getting the response from the DNS cache itself as already noted by <i>verdeboy2k</i>.

--
Prasanta

2 points.

1) As verdeboy2k mentioned "The router probably refreshed its DNS cache. If it ever happens again just change /etc/resolv.conf to point to your ISP's DNS server"

2) To get the user/pass for the router, go through with a factory reset.
This will reset the Admin user/pass.
You will have to re-configure the router settings, after logging back in. But it's the price you pay for losing/forgetting passwords

Regards,