What does the Bad Gateway 502 error mean if you can not open a site and how you can solve it
The white page written 502 Bad Gateway is a type of error that occurs quite often when you surf the Internet, trying to visit a website even of the best known.
The meaning of the error 502 is related to the invalid response given by the server that acts as a proxy and then connects to the web server that hosts the site and depends, most of the time, from the site itself.
However, compared to the series of errors 404 or 403, when the page with the 502 appears, it may be that the problem is only temporary or even that it happens only once for that site due to a random error, overload or a faulty communication between servers.
Sometimes, this error can occur instead due to a problem on the computer or on the network.
For example, it is also possible that there is an improperly configured firewall or even an encryption error and that the problem is not resolved until these problems are resolved. In general, therefore, the site you are trying to access is absolutely online, but the server or one of the intermediate servers that brings the request to the site, which acts as a proxy to forward the information from another server, has received a negative answer from the latter.
It is called error 502 because that is the HTTP status code used by the server to describe this type of error.
The aspect of this error page 502 is usually with a white background and black writing, but it can change if the server manager has made it more personalized.
Usually it is called HTTP Error 502 Bad Gateway, but it can also appear with other names.
HTTP 502
502 Service Temporarily Overloaded
Temporary Error (502)
502 Server Error:
Bad Gateway Nginx
502 Bad Gateway Apache Over the vast majority of the time, this is just a server-side error that it is not possible to check.
Sometimes, it’s a temporary mistake; sometimes it is not, there are some things you can try to solve the problem.
1) Reload the page
Try again to load the site is the first thing to do to see if it was just a mistake of the moment.
Many times the error 502 is temporary and a simple update could solve.
On Chrome and most browsers, you can press the F5 key to update quickly and repeatedly until the searched page appears.
2) Check if the site is not available for other people
If at that time does not work, you can try again later, but in the meantime it would be appropriate to check if we are the only ones with the problem or if this error happens to all those who try to reach the site.
There are many tools to check if a site is offline just for us or for everyone, like downforeveryoneorjustme.com that works well and controls the activities of every website in the world.
If you receive, as an answer, that the site does not open for everyone, there is not much to do but wait and try again later.
If the report shows that the site is active, the problem may be on our computer, even though for the 502 error this error is very common.
In the event that, however, it depended on us and was found that only we can not navigate on that website, then we can try the following solutions.
– Try another browser
It may be that the browser used is badly configured or has problems related to the installed extensions.
An easy way to check it out is to use a different browser and see if the site works.
You can use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari or Microsoft Edge. If you can see the error even in the new browser, then you know it’s not a browser problem and you should try another solution.
– Clear browser cache and cookies
If you are trying a different browser and it works, it is possible that obsolete or corrupted files may be cached on the browser with error 502.
Removing these cached files and attempting to open the website may resolve the problem.
– Check plugins and extensions
As mentioned above, extensions on Chrome or Firefox can give problems to the loading of sites.
You can try to disable all your extensions and then open the website.
This can be done as quickly as possible by opening an incognito session.
– Restart PC and Router
If the site is online and reachable by everyone, but no browser on the computer opens it, you can try turning off and on the computer and also the router in order to reset any temporary problem.
– Change DNS server
The error 502 can surely depend on a problem of DNS servers, although it is certainly not the most common cause.
In another article we saw the guide to change DNS on Windows PC, Mac (which is very easy), always recommending to use the Google DNS servers, which are among the most reliable.