It started sometime after I upgraded to Mavericks (it was 10.9.something by the time I got around to it, and I really do quite enjoy using it) and before the next update. I would be poking around on the internet and seemingly at random, everything would just stop working.
Everything that wasn't going over http would work fine (ssh on terminal, im programs, Tor).
I initially assumed there was something wrong with dns so tried using OpenDNS instead of my isp, but that didn't fix it.
I tried flushing dns caches every way I found relevant to OSX 10.8 and 10.9 on the internet, but that didn't fix it.
I figured there might be something wrong with the routing maybe as when I tracerouted any given site, I would get stuck somewhere inside hwng.net or bandcon.com (which appear to be the same thing), however Tor worked.