For a long time now, whenever I try to view a Wikipedia page, the page either doesn’t load at all, or loads in a raw text format (without all the pretty stuff like formulae and images) after about 2 or 3 minutes.
This happens to any device connected to my WiFi. If I turn WiFi off on my phone, it loads fine, almost instantly.
My connection is not slow: I can watch YouTube videos and Netflix just fine. This only happens on Wikipedia.
Some possible reasons I can think of:
My ISP is blocking Wikipedia for some reason. I live in the Abu Dhabi and the ISP has been known to block stuff. But you usually get redirected to a notice saying that the website is blocked. If the ISP is interfering then it would be just for me, because friends who use the same ISP do not have this problem.
Wikipedia is blocking me. Maybe a device in my home has joined a botnet and my IP address is on a blacklist or something. Seems unlikely.
I know for a fact that I do not have any settings on my router related to any specific website.
Anecdotal: I had similar problems, not just with Wikipedia, but with many popular sites (Amazon, IMDb, YouTube, etc.). It turned out to be a faulty router. I alleviated my problem a few times by rebooting the router but by that time the writing was on the wall. Replaced the router and no more problems.
I just downloaded the app (WiFi connection works fine to download from the App Store). Tried to open a page. Did not load. Turned off WiFi, loads fine.
Power cycle the router. As above, it is very likely the culprit. Somehow it will have a bad routing entry or similar stuck in it and it is misdirecting the communication with that location. Almost exactly the same thing has happened to me (the only difference being the web site - I was unable to get at my ISP’s local akamai server which stopped some content loading. It is possible this is actually what your problem is.)
Reboot your router and modem. That’s the thing that’s common to every device you have an issue with. I’ve had routers randomly block sites for no apparent reason.
Wow! I did not expect restarting the router to work. But it did! Thanks to those suggesting it.
Now that I have removed an annoyance, I am curious how this actually happened. What is required for the router to exhibit this behaviour?
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Routers acting as DNS servers will cache the DNS lookup data to save time the next time you ask for that same URL. If a bad result was cached (I dunno why) it might continue to have issues until the cache is flushed (perhaps such as by rebooting the router).
The result doesn’t have to be bad, just stale. I don’t know how it works, but I do know that “What is the best IP address to find Wikipedia” is in fact not a very simple question, and that the answer changes sometimes depending where and when you ask.