When browsing the internet, nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a website that takes seemingly forever to load.
This situation is exacerbated when the website fails to load entirely.
In this article, we will discuss two common errors – namely DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG and ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT that you might face when browsing the internet.
We will take a look at some of the common troubleshooting steps that you can perform, both as a visitor and the owner of a website.
Let’s get started!
Isolating The Error
When you browse a website on the internet, there are many things that work in tandem to serve you the requested content. You will face a different error if any of these things go wrong. Therefore, it is important to identify what is causing the error.
The quickest and most basic thing you can do first is to confirm that your internet connection is working properly. There are different ways to do this:
- Open A Different Website: Try loading a different website. If none of the websites are loading, then there’s probably something wrong with your connection.
- Try a Different Network: It is a good idea to check the website from multiple networks. This will help you identify any outage caused at your ISP’s end. Moreover, if you use a VPN or Proxy, you can try switching it off temporarily.
If neither of the above solutions work, then the problem was caused at your end. If not, then you can try using a crash monitoring service. If you can open other websites, there are many online services such as Check If Down and Website Down Checker that you can use to check if a particular website is not working. If these tools report that the site is broken, then there’s nothing you can do as a website visitor, as this can only be fixed by the administrator.
Case 1: Website is Down for You
If the crash monitoring service tells you that the website is working for everyone else, then there are several steps you can take to resolve this issue.
Clear Cookies and Cache
A quick and easy fix for fixing this is by clearing the outdated and stale files in your browser. You can do this on most browsers by clicking on the ‘lock’ or ‘tune’ icon in the address bar, and following the instructions.
Turn off VPN and Proxy
If you are using either a VPN or a Proxy server and are facing connectivity issues, then you can try turning it off. VPNs and Proxy servers reroute your internet traffic, which can sometimes affect connectivity. Connecting to the internet directly by turning off the VPN or proxy would allow you to check whether the site is working properly.
Firewall
If you are located in a university or a corporate network, then it is possible that your traffic is being filtered by a firewall. The network administrators in these organizations can block or deny access to certain websites based on some internal policies.
Even if you are not using a corporate firewall, your ISP can still block and monitor your internet traffic to comply with local regulations. For example, the Chinese government blocks a number of popular websites. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done in this case apart from using a VPN to bypass the firewall.
Update DNS Records
More often than not, ISPs set their own DNS servers as default when configuring your internet connection. However, sometimes these are not reliable and can face outages. If you suspect your DNS isn’t working properly, you can change it to use a more reliable service.
Here is a list of some of the most commonly used servers:
- Cloudflare – 1.1.1.1
- Google – 8.8.8.8
- Quad9 – 9.9.9.9
You use any of these publicly available servers. Just go to your network settings, look for an option to change your DNS server, and then simply replace the existing values.
Reboot Router/PC
If your internet connection is acting up, you can always try restarting your internet router, modem, and switches. Although this sounds simple, this is one of the most effective ways to troubleshoot hard-to-diagnose bugs.
Case 2: Website is Down for Everyone
If the crash monitoring tools tell you that the website is down for everyone, then the website admin can follow the given steps to troubleshoot the issue.
Rebuild Web-app Configuration
If your website is not serving requests properly, you can try re-building and deploying your web application again. With RunCloud you can do this from the dashboard directly.
Just open your web application dashboard and navigate to the Tools menu in the left sidebar. Once there, click on the rebuild web app config button.
Revert Configuration Changes
If you have recently edited your wp-config.php file, added new rules to .htaccess, or configured new Nginx rules, try rolling them back. With RunCloud, you can edit .htaccess and the wp-config files using the File Manager.
The Nginx Config can be found under the Nginx Config menu.
Disable Firewall
Poorly configured firewalls can often cause issues. To fix this type of issue, try relaxing the rules of your firewall a little to troubleshoot the problems. With RunCloud, you can find these settings under the Firewall tab of web application settings.
Revert to Last Working Backup
For ecommerce websites, every minute offline means a loss of revenue. If you want to quickly restore your site then you can always revert to the last working backup of your site.
However, you should keep in mind that any changes made to your site after the backup, but before the crash, will be lost. For example, if a user placed an order just before your site crashed, then that order will be lost.
With RunCloud, creating and restoring backups is as easy as snapping your fingers. The whole thing can be done with just a few clicks. Read our post on How To Properly Back Up Your Website to know more.
Wrapping Up
In this post, we have discussed different issues that can cause DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG and ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT errors. We have outlined different steps that you can take as either a normal user, or as the owner of your website to quickly get to the bottom of the issue.
If you are running a WordPress website, it is always advisable to use staging sites for testing changes, and use an automated monitoring service such as Datadog, Newrelic, or Uptimerobot for tracking downtime.
RunCloud makes managing servers and deploying your websites easier, start using RunCloud today!
