I can't get google, youtube on my mac desktop, mac book pro, and iphone. Wondering if I have a virus?

Question

When I open Safari and try to go to youtube its states the following.  Safari can't open the page "http://www.youtube.com/" because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection.  This sometimes occurs when the server is busy.  Wait for a few minutes, and then try again.
This has been going on for two weeks.  My son's macbook pro and my iphone get the same message when linked to my wireless connection.  Yet, when I disconnect my wi-fi from my phone and use 3g, I'm able to pull up google and youtube fine.
Also, when I try and go to google's home page from my computer, it takes me to a chinese site with 789 at the beginning of the address bar.
I'm able to go to other saved websites with no problems.
I'm wondering if this is a virus or not?
Any sugguestions?
Thanks

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure it's your  network connection that it's causing that behavior. Possible causes might be:
- from your ISP:
     - routing problems;
     - proxy servers;
     - dns issues;
- on your home network:
     - your router(s) might have a messed up config, caused by any of the previous reasons
I don't think that it is the setup on any of your devices, since it would be too much of a coincidence to have 3 devices with the same setup mistakes (unless you previously had to done that in order to work with a previous ISP/Internet connection). Besides, as you stated, they work fine on 3G.
A good test you can perform, would be to check with Network Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Network Utility.app) and check for Lookup (DNS) and Traceroute tests. Check Lookup and Traceroute info for www.youtube.com and www.google.com, something like this (these results are ofc from my connection, yours will be slightly different):
Traceroute has started ...
traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 173.194.66.106
traceroute to www.l.google.com (173.194.66.106), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  2.764 ms  1.253 ms  1.168 ms
2  * * *
3  bl3-73-49.dsl.telepac.pt (213.13.73.49)  14.024 ms  11.705 ms  10.031 ms <--- this means the request has passed through my network, and it is already on my ISP servers
Lookup has started ...
; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.youtube.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17629
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.youtube.com.        IN    A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.youtube.com.    83551    IN    CNAME    youtube-ui.l.google.com.
youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169    IN    A    173.194.66.190
youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169    IN    A    173.194.66.136
youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169    IN    A    173.194.66.91
youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169    IN    A    173.194.66.93
;; Query time: 47 msec
;; SERVER: 194.65.100.117#53(194.65.100.117)
;; WHEN: Fri Mar 30 13:31:20 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 131
One more thing: you mentioned using the devices through Wi-fi and 3G, but what about ethernet cable? same thing? Because it can be a wi-fi performace issue, although that would not explain why you are being redirected to a chinese server.