Took me 4 hours to find a simple DNS setting that was blocking my work VPN

Last Tuesday I spent almost an entire afternoon trying to connect to my remote work server. I checked my firewall, reset my router, even reinstalled the VPN client twice. Turns out my browser was using a custom DNS setting I forgot about from a privacy experiment six months ago. Changed that one dropdown box and it worked in under 10 seconds. Has anyone else spent way too long on a fix that ended up being something small and dumb?

2 comments

2 Comments

harperwright15d ago

8 specific DNS settings I had written down on a sticky note from like 2022 were somehow still active in my network preferences. I never even remembered putting them in there, it was just this random IP address from some old server I used once. Took me maybe three hours of yelling at my laptop before I noticed the custom DNS box, not my finest moment. Maybe it's just me but I feel like these tiny settings are designed specifically to mess with people who just want to get work done. Honestly my router probably thinks I hate it after all the restarting I did that day.

felix15515d ago

Did you ever figure out what that old server IP was actually for? I've got a similar ghost from 2019 floating around in my own settings that I can't trace back to anything. Makes you wonder how many of these little config gremlins are just sitting there silently messing with your speed and you have no clue.