ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

The short version: Check another device on the same network. If it works too, reset your adapter or toggle airplane mode, which clears stale network state and fixes most cases. If nothing works anywhere, restart the router. If you are on a public network, open any http:// address to trigger the sign-in portal, and disconnect any VPN completely, since a kill switch blocks traffic exactly like a dead connection.

Key takeaways

• ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED is Chromium net error -106. The browser believes the device has no usable network connection at all, so it stops before contacting any website.
• This is a local error in almost every case. It is raised before a destination is involved, so it says nothing about whether any particular website is up.
• A connected Wi-Fi icon does not contradict it. You can hold a perfect link to a router whose own upstream is down, or sit behind a captive portal intercepting every request.
• VPN kill switches produce this exact error by design: when the tunnel drops they block all traffic rather than let it leak, which the browser reads as no connection.
• Toggling airplane mode or resetting the adapter fixes a large share of cases because it forces the network stack to discard stale state and negotiate again.

Error type

Browser connection error (Chromium net error -106)

Whose side

Almost always your device or network

Fix difficulty

Easy

Common cause

No usable network connection

What does ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED mean?

ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED is Chromium net error -106, and it is raised earlier than almost any other browser error. Before attempting a request, the browser asks the operating system whether a usable network path exists. When the answer is no, it stops there and shows this message. No domain was resolved, no address was contacted, no packet was sent. That is why the error tells you nothing at all about the website you were trying to reach: the website was never part of the attempt.

The confusing part is that "connected" means different things to different layers. Your Wi-Fi indicator reports a link to the router, which is one hop. Everything beyond that, the router's own upstream connection, the route out of the network, whether a portal is intercepting traffic, is invisible to it. So a device can show full signal while the network has no path to anywhere. Add VPN kill switches, which block all traffic by design when a tunnel drops, and captive portals, which hold every request until you sign in, and you have the four situations that produce this error on a connection that appears healthy.

-106

The Chromium net error number behind this message, defined in net_error_list.h

1 hop

How far the Wi-Fi icon actually reports: a link to the router, not a working path beyond it

RFC 8910

The standard for captive portals, the networks that intercept every request until you sign in

How the ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED error appears

The wording changes depending on your browser, device, or server. Here is how this error commonly shows up:

example.com

No internet

There is no internet connection.

ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

• ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED
• net::ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED
• No internet
• There is no internet connection
• You are offline
• Your Internet connection was interrupted

Disconnected, unreachable, refused and unresolved

Only the first of these is raised before a destination is involved, which is what makes it purely local.

Where "no connection" actually breaks

The browser reports one error for several quite different failures, and each has its own giveaway.

What causes ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED?

• No network link at all: Wi-Fi switched off, a disconnected cable, airplane mode left on, or a device that dropped its connection while asleep.
• A router whose own upstream connection is down, so every device shows a healthy local link while nothing can leave the network.
• A captive portal on a hotel, cafe, or airport network intercepting all traffic until you sign in, which fails silently for HTTPS requests.
• A VPN kill switch blocking traffic after the tunnel dropped, which is designed to look exactly like having no connection.
• A network adapter or driver in a bad state, most often after sleep, a network change, or a VPN client disconnecting badly.
• A system or browser proxy configured for a network you are no longer on, so requests are sent somewhere that no longer exists.
• Security software or a firewall blocking the browser specifically, which produces the error in Chrome while other applications work.

How to find the cause fast

1. Try another device on the same network. Both failing points at the router or the line; only one failing points at that device.
2. Ping a raw IP such as 1.1.1.1. Failing on an address as well as a name rules DNS out and confirms there is no path at all.
3. Open any plain http:// page. On a public network this triggers the sign-in portal, which an HTTPS request would never reveal.
4. Disconnect any VPN fully and retry, since a kill switch produces this error even while the client looks idle.

Terminal

ping -c 2 1.1.1.1ping: sendto: Network is unreachable# not DNS: raw IP fails too, so there is no path off this device at all

How ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED looks from the outside

This error is produced entirely by your own device and never reaches any website, so it will not appear in anyone's server logs. For a visitor that is reassuring: the website is almost certainly fine. For a website owner it is a reminder that a large share of what users report as "your site is down" never touched your infrastructure at all. The only way to answer that question with evidence rather than assumption is to have independent checks running from outside your network, so you can say what your website was actually doing at the time someone could not reach it.

How to fix ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

If you are a visitor

1. Check whether another device on the same network can browse. That single test splits a device problem from a network problem immediately.
2. Toggle airplane mode on, then off, or disable and re-enable the network adapter, to discard stale routes and leases.
3. Restart the router if nothing works on any device, and check whether the connection light indicates an upstream fault.
4. On a public network, open any http:// address to force the captive portal to appear so you can sign in.
5. Disconnect any VPN completely rather than toggling a setting, because a kill switch keeps blocking traffic even when the client looks inactive.
6. Check system and browser proxy settings, and clear any proxy configured for a network you have since left.
7. Disable security software and browser extensions temporarily, especially if other applications can reach the internet while Chrome cannot.

If you run the website

1. Recognise that this error never reached you. Nothing in your logs will correspond to it, because no request was ever sent.
2. When a user reports it, ask whether other websites load for them. If nothing loads, the fault is on their side and no change to your service will help.
3. Keep independent external monitoring running, so you can state what your website was doing at the time rather than inferring it from an absence of errors.
4. Make sure your service degrades sensibly for flaky connections, since users who see this error intermittently are the ones most likely to hit half-loaded pages.

Still not fixed? Next steps

• Check whether other devices on the same network work. One device failing points at that device; every device failing points at the router or the line.
• Look for a captive portal by opening any plain http:// address, which forces the interception to reveal itself where an HTTPS request would just fail.
• Disconnect any VPN completely rather than toggling a setting, since a partially disabled client can leave its blocking rules active.
• Reset the network adapter, or toggle airplane mode on a laptop or phone, to discard stale routes, leases, and DNS state.
• Check the system proxy settings. A proxy configured for a network you are no longer on will block traffic while everything else appears normal.

Code & configuration

Copy-paste starting points. Replace example.com and the paths with your own, and test changes on staging before production.

Separate "no path" from "no DNS"

# a raw IP needs no DNS at all
ping -c 2 1.1.1.1
# Network is unreachable   -> no path off this device

# if that works but names fail, the problem is DNS instead
ping -c 2 example.com

Reset the network stack to clear stale state

# Windows, in an elevated prompt
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
ipconfig /release && ipconfig /renew

# macOS: toggle the interface
sudo ifconfig en0 down && sudo ifconfig en0 up

Force a captive portal to reveal itself

# HTTPS just fails; a plain http request gets intercepted and redirected
curl -I http://neverssl.com
# a 302 to an unfamiliar host means a portal is waiting for a sign-in

How to prevent ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

When a visitor reports that your website would not load, this error is one of the reasons it may have had nothing to do with you. Without independent evidence that is a hard case to make, because an outage on their side and an outage on yours look identical from a support ticket. Pulsetic checks your website from multiple locations every 30 seconds and alerts you by email, SMS, voice call, Slack, Discord, Telegram, or webhook when it genuinely stops answering, which gives you a record of what your website was doing at any moment rather than an argument about it.

Learn how Pulsetic's uptime monitoring detects this from the outside, across 15+ locations.

Sources and further reading

The specifications and vendor documentation this guide is written from, plus deeper reading on the parts it only summarises.

• Chromium network error list (net_error_list.h)
• MDN: Navigator.onLine
• RFC 8910: Captive portal identification