Can't ping Google but I still can browse with a few tries

Question

I'm new to Linux. My problem started a few days ago. I can't browse or download anything but I'm still connected to the internet (via WiFi). However, when I try to download something from my phone, it works just fine.

After that, I reboot the PC and it solves the problem for a 20 minutes or so. Then I can't connect to internet again. When I ping google.com in terminal, it replies with ping: unknown host google.com.

Output of nslookup google.com after reboot and while the problem exists -

Server: 127.0.1.1
Address: 127.0.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.102
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.101
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.113
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.138
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.100
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.139

Output of traceroute 8.8.8.8 while there is a problem:

traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1 192.168.100.1 (192.168.100.1) 1.697 ms 1.656 ms 2.430 ms
 2 36.68.32.1 (36.68.32.1) 8.348 ms 8.403 ms 8.714 ms
 ...
 20 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 19.083 ms 19.472 ms 28.314 ms 

Please help me solve this problem.

Answer 1

This is caused by a DNS issue... a quick solution is to setup the DNS manually to for instance google DNS 8.8.8.8 or cloudflare 1.1.1.1

You can sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf to add the custom DNS settings this how linux DNS work (resolv.conf) but bare in mind that this file is also edited by other network application that change the DNS according to their configuration.

Here is a complete setup guide about DNS How to setup DNS manually on Linux?

Answer 2

Check if multiple devices on your network are attempting to use the same IP address. I had similar behavior to this when my desktop and laptop were both using 192.168.1.13 (the desktop getting it assigned automatically, and the laptop requesting it statically).