baeuchlein on 9/2/2006 at 00:53
I have a strange problem when using the TTLG forums. It does not occur with other internet sites I frequently visit.
The problem itself begins some time after accessing the forums the first time after a fresh reboot. When I click on a topic, a delay occurs before the browser reacts. The delay time will increase over time, although I might get several prompt responses to my clicks now and then.
After a while, the delay will be so long that I click a second time after several seconds. The reaction will occur almost immediately after the second click. But from this time forward, I will always have to click two times to get a reaction.
If I still don't give up, it will increase to three clicks for one reaction and maybe even more, but from now on, the browser can freeze forever after a click as well.
The problem is neither browser- nor hardware-specific; several browsers (Firefox 0.8, Internet Explorer, Lynx) and at least three different computers all exhibited the same problem after a while.
The kind of connection to the internet does not matter either: Modem, ISDN or broadband (DLS) - it happens with all of them.
However, the problem is influenced heavily by the operating system used. Since I started visiting the Forums as a guest in 2003 or 2004, it happened only once with Linux, but very often with Windows 98. I have not tried other OS'.
Has anyone else ever had such a problem? What could be the reason behind this?
Kyloe on 9/2/2006 at 07:16
Do you have a proxy?
What's your DNS?
baeuchlein on 14/2/2006 at 11:16
Quote Posted by Kyloe
Do you have a proxy?
I don't think so. Firefox is set to "Direct connection to the internet" in the proxy menu, and from what I read in Lynx' configuration file, it's not using a proxy either. We had proxy-related problems years ago, so we stopped using them.
DSL flows through a broadband router/switch device. It's configuration menu does not show anything that seems to be related to a proxy, so I guess it's not using any proxy either.
Quote Posted by Kyloe
What's your DNS?
Depends... The DSL router usually selects 217.237.150.97 and 217.237.151.33, which it gets from T-Online (provider) automatically. Windows 95/98 and Linux have different DNS addresses: 145.253.2.11, 145.253.2.75 (both maintained by another provider, Arcor) and 194.25.2.129 (older DNS from T-Online). Their order varies from installation to installation, however.
Until now, I recognized no problems with any of those DNS, but I just had problems "pinging" 194.25.2.129. This one is the first one listed in Windows, but the second in Linux. Maybe this is the problem - I'll move it down the list in Windows and see what happens. Thanks for that idea, seems to lead into the right direction.
Strange, however, that only the TTLG forums seem to be affected by this.
baeuchlein on 27/2/2006 at 22:57
Changing the DNS server entries did not help, the situation is still the same. Any other ideas would be appreciated.
Kyloe on 28/2/2006 at 07:23
Did you make a DNS entry pointing to the router? You should try that on the Windows system. Make it the first entry.
Be careful when you do this on the Linux system, though. Linux usually make an IPv6 lookup first, which can crash the DNS proxy device in many routers. It's better to use the provider's DNS IP on Linux hosts.
If you're connected to one ISP and use the DNS servers of another, that should work in theory. However, your ISP would have to pay for the traffic to the other ISP, which is unnecessary when they run their own DNS servers. Perhaps they block such traffic and modify repeated lookups to point to their own DNS.
baeuchlein on 1/3/2006 at 10:21
Still no change. I made the first DNS entry point to the router (the internal IP was used, not the one which is assigned to the router by the ISP when we connect to the internet). The second and third one contained the ISP's DNS Servers. I used the DNS IP's which the router automatically got from the ISP. I accessed the TTLG Forums and could read one posting, but when I tried to read a second one, the browser told me (after a few seconds) the page could not be found. Other web sites responded normally.
/etc/resolv.conf in Linux starts with one of another ISP's name servers, then an old one from my ISP is used, and the last one is a second DNS server from the first ISP. The strange thing is that this works better than Windows' DNS setup. Maybe it's not a DNS problem at all.
I have changed the order of entries in resolv.conf, the first entry is now the DNS server used by my ISP. I have not noticed any problems in Linux yet - no change here as well.
Kyloe on 1/3/2006 at 11:09
Perhaps you should clean your browser cache. See if that helps.
baeuchlein on 7/3/2006 at 21:02
Emptying the browser cache did not help, but I found an interesting clue to this riddle.
When I look around a bit among the postings and then wait a long time, the problem usually shows up. Since the router is set up to disconnect from the internet after some time with no data transfer, I thought this could trigger the problem somehow.
I have now been downloading several things for about an hour. Even if I waited ten minutes between posting or clicking on an icon, the problem did not show up. Apparently, disconnecting and reconnecting somehow triggers my problem, but only if I wait long enough. I have waited for the router to disconnect and reconnect some time ago, and this happened (my IP on the internet changed), but if I used the forums after one or two minutes, nothing bad happened. Strange.
However, all this does not explain why it happened as well when I used ISDN or a modem. I usually are not disconnected, then. And why did it happen almost never with Linux? :weird:
Really strange.
