Let's start with the setup:
Comcast cable modem -> Linksys E3000 router -> wireless connections to:
-Windows Vista desktop, running Firefox and IE 9 (in default configuration)
-Macbook air (Snow Leopard, running Safari in default configuration)
-several iPads of various generations (running Safari, Atomic, and Terra browsers in default configurations)
-Grace Audio Mondo streaming internet radio
So, starting about two weeks ago, the internet radio started to fail on its attempts to connect to the audio stream from Colorado Public Radio (cpr.org). Figuring the site was down, I tried to check www.cpr.org in a browser, first on the desktop, and then on the others. All devices threw a "cannot connect to server" error. All the devices (including the radio) connect just fine to any other web site (or audio stream) I give them, but they all choke on connecting to cpr.org.
It's not cpr.org itself -- that's up (check it yourself!), and seemingly has been the entire time. My first guess was that there's a DNS problem in my network. So I:
- wait several days, in case it's just a DNS record change with a too-long TTL. More than two weeks later, problem persists.
- check to see of the E3000 does DNS caching. It doesn't.
- power cycled the router several times. No change.
- reset the DNS servers for the router, going from default (0.0.0.0) to Google DNS (8.8.8.8). No change.
- used the reset button on the router to reset it to factory default settings. No change.
On the off chance it's the modem, I power cycled that (including taking the battery out). No change.
Since the problem affects all devices on the network, I don't think that any one of them is the problem, but just to be safe, I did a DNS flush on the desktop, checked the hosts file on the desktop (fine), and tried as many different browsers as I could on as many different devices as I could. Still no ability to connect to cpr.org on any of them.
Oddly, I can both ping and tracert cpr.org from the desktop with no problems. (There's a lengthy delay -- 400-900 ms, sometimes -- on the first hop or two of the tracert, but it gets to cpr.org eventually.) I haven't tried it from other devices, but I suspect the result would be the same. I have no real reason to believe that it's malware -- we practice pretty good internet hygiene, and it seems like a strange website for malware to target.
Contacted cpr.org's IT department, to no avail. ("Have you checked to see if your Flash player is up to date?")
I'm stumped. Any advice?