A laptop on a store WLAN resolves names and cannot ping its gateway. Other clients on the same WLAN ping the gateway. What is the fault for this laptop?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
You can resolve names, but your laptop still cannot reach its gateway while other clients can. The fault is your laptop’s path to the gateway; a successful lookup does not prove the gateway answers your laptop.
Full Explanation
DNS and the gateway are different hops. Your laptop resolves names but cannot ping the gateway, while other clients on the same WLAN can, so the gateway is up and the fault is the path from your laptop to it. The DNS-server explanation is wrong because a successful name lookup does not mean the gateway is down for everyone; the other clients’ successful pings disprove that. The certificate explanation is wrong because being on the WLAN and resolving names shows that authentication has already succeeded in this design; a gateway ping is not an authentication retry. The country-code explanation is wrong because a regulatory block would not explain a gateway failure affecting only your laptop. Exam caveat: a personal firewall on your laptop can drop ping packets while the gateway is functioning, so consider testing another protocol if ICMP is filtered. For a practical check, compare your laptop’s address and VLAN with a working client, identify the hop only your laptop cannot cross, then retest and read the live counters. Check one live client after the change, and leave the rest of the floor alone until that client matches the expected result.