B-ONE "Connected but No Internet" (Ping works, Browsing fails) – Fix for DoH and Time Sync Issues

Product Discussion
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Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a troubleshooting path and solution for an issue I recently encountered with my Peplink B-ONE (Hardware Rev 1, Firmware 8.5.3).

The Symptom: Out of the blue, without any trigger such as changes to config or firmware, on Dec. 15, 2025, all my wifi client devices lost internet access.

The Investigation: I was able to login into the B-ONE as admin and saw the router showing “Connected” to the WAN (Xfinity), but all client devices appeared not to have internet access. I could ping 8.8.8.8 from the router admin and from client devices, but web browsing (DNS) failed.

After a factory reset, the router went back to fw 8.5.2 and worked fine in its default config. However, restoring my saved custom config (which worked perfectly since 2024) consistently broke internet access for clients, even though the WAN status was green.

The Fix (2-Step Process):

  1. DNS over HTTPS (DoH) Conflict: In my 2024 config, I had DNS over HTTPS enabled. Because DoH requires a secure SSL handshake, it is extremely sensitive to the system’s time. If the handshake fails, the router “fails closed” and blocks all DNS resolution.
  • Action: While running fw 8.5.2 and my custom 2024 config, I confirmed browsing did not work but pinging 8.8.8.8 did. I navigated to Network > WAN and disabled DNS over HTTPS. Internet browsing returned immediately.
  1. The Root Cause: Time Sync Source: The reason DoH was failing was that my system time got out of sync on Dec. 15. In my custom configuration, the Time Server Source Network Address was pointing to a specific VLAN rather than the WAN. Since the router couldn’t “talk” to the time server via that local VLAN, the clock drifted, breaking the DoH SSL handshake.
  • Action: Went to System > Time. Changed Time Server to time.nist.gov (manual override).
  • This allowed the router to reach out to the time server via the WAN, sync the clock, and subsequently allowed DoH to be re-enabled and function correctly.

Summary for others: If you can ping IP addresses but can’t browse the web, check your DNS over HTTPS settings. If you use DoH, ensure your System Time is accurate and that the router’s time sync is not restricted to a local VLAN that cannot reach the internet.

Hope this helps someone else avoid a few hours of head-scratching!

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Thanks for documenting this — the “connected but no internet” symptom (where pings work but browsing fails) can be really confusing, and for a lot of us it’s reassuring to see common patterns like DoH and time‑sync issues crop up.

A few additional things that often help when you’re troubleshooting like this:

Double‑check DNS behavior: If DoH (DNS over HTTPS) ends up forced through a route that the Peplink can’t reach, clients will appear connected (ping works by IP) but name resolution fails — which explains why browsing dies. Turning DoH off or making sure it’s actually reaching a reachable resolver fixes that nicely.

Time sync matters more than people expect: If clients or the router itself have a skewed clock, TLS connections often fail silently because certificates look “invalid” even though nothing else seems wrong. Ensuring NTP works (or pointing to a reachable internal NTP) usually clears up a lot of weird HTTPS failures.

Firewall/inspection settings: Sometimes inspection or content filtering can accidentally block outbound HTTP/S if there’s a rule mismatch, which again looks like “internet gone” but ping still works.

One scenario I ran into recently was where a remote proxy — in my case, something behaving like a Falkland Islands proxy for geo‑testing — was being pushed via a policy route that didn’t include DNS traffic. That caused everything except raw IP pings to fail until the routing was fixed, so if you’re using any custom routing or proxy policies, it’s worth checking that DNS and web traffic are covered.

Overall, what you’ve pinned down (DoH + time sync) fits a lot of cases I’ve seen. Glad you shared the fix steps!

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