A website problem fixed?

island_dude · 06:47 AM

A very part time activity of mine is hosting my wife's website. Over time she has had a few complaints from people who said they had problems getting access to it. This became an increasing source of anoyance until I finally figured out who was having the issues.

In short, it boils down to verizon DSL users (and FIOS too), and it is realted to browsers too. Odd. I think I have it fixed, but I really need some verizon users to help me.

Here is the deal: the production site is http://zoyaphoto.com
If you have issues hit this site (like it seems to never load) you are someone I would like to try the test site:

http://zoyaphoto.com:8080

If hitting this second URL makes it work (or not) I would love to find out. This thing is driving me crazy.

Besides, there are some pretty pictures there.

Thanks

stomachmonkey · 11-05-2005, 06:39 AM

Verizon DSL, IE and Mozilla, Mac OSX

1st URL times out.

Second link is not found.

Went thru my co's VPN and was able to get to the site.

What's the purpose of the script on each page?

I'd comment it out and see if it helps.

island_dude · 11-05-2005, 06:52 AM

Well there is a goo d reason that the second url didn't work. I messed up and dropped the ".com" off of the end of it! I edited the post so it is correct now. Could you give it a quick test?

As far as the script goes, I don't know. The web site was developed in frontpage and it does some things that I don't understand. I wish I knew.

If anyone really cares I can tell you the whole saga of how I diagnosed this problem. It wasn't pretty or easy. I hope that I really have found a fix.

stomachmonkey · 11-05-2005, 07:34 AM

Noticed that you dropped the .com off so I had tried it properly formatted and still nothing.

I'll try a couple of things.

Scott

stomachmonkey · 11-05-2005, 08:06 AM

OK, don't think it's the script or pages but if you dont know what the script does you should get rid of it, if the sites behaves leave it out.

I sucked down one of your pages with my VPN connection anad stuck it on my server,

http://stomachmonkeys.com/projects/test/wedding_packages.htm

Works fine from there.

Then I did a traceroute to zoyaphoto.com and I it fails after the first hop.

Then I did a lookup and got this as your IP address, 68.101.40.34

When I use that as the URL I get to the page just fine althought traceroute to the IP fails, that's odd.

You are using coxbusiness for hosting?

I get teh feeling that it's more of a dns issue with cox. Have you spoken to tech support there?

Good luck.

Scott

island_dude · 11-05-2005, 08:34 AM

Scott,
Thanks for your help. Where to begin. I have spent countless hours on the phone with Cox. We have had folks on the phone with verizon too. They are basically no help.

As far as I have been able to determine, this isn't a DNS or an IP connectivity issue. It is consistent and repeatable and only seems to affect people on verizon links. I have noticed that the behavior is affected by browser versions.

I thought I had the problem nailed when I set up an alternate server and it worked. The alternate server used https, and this wasn't an acceptable solution.

From what I can tell, this has something to do with the proxy server architecture that Verizon is using. It seems that various versions of IE are not affected by it.

As it turns out, the server receives the http request from the browser, but then the actual page is never received. The server thinks that it has sucessfully sent the page however. It is mighty strange.

Thanks for helping my out,

Paul

jrdavid68 · 11-05-2005, 09:38 AM

IE 6.x w/SBC DSL

Everything works.

I would agree with a DNS issue somewhere.

jrdavid68 · 11-05-2005, 09:44 AM

Tracert - I know how to do it, just don't know how to read it. Does seem like it bounces around cox quite a bit before finding the site:

Tracing route to zoyaphoto.com [68.101.40.34]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms homeportal.gateway.2wire.net [172.16.0.1]

2 15 ms 17 ms 16 ms adsl-67-122-211-254.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [67.122.211.254]

3 17 ms 14 ms 17 ms dist1-vlan50.snfc21.pbi.net [206.171.134.130]

4 16 ms 16 ms 18 ms bb1-10g2-0.snfcca.sbcglobal.net [216.102.176.224]

5 17 ms 17 ms 14 ms core1-p14-1.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.242.65]

6 15 ms 17 ms 14 ms bb1-p8-0.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.243.2]

7 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms ex1-p9-0.pxpaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.240.17]

8 17 ms 17 ms 26 ms asn22773-cox.pxpaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.248.50]

9 39 ms 39 ms 39 ms nwstbbrc01-pos0200.rd.lv.cox.net [68.1.0.94]

10 40 ms 39 ms 40 ms nwstbbrc02-pos0100.rd.lv.cox.net [68.1.0.83]

11 71 ms 74 ms 71 ms mtc1bbrc01-pos0102.rd.om.cox.net [68.1.0.93]

12 72 ms 72 ms 72 ms mtc1bbrc02-pos0100.rd.om.cox.net [68.1.0.123]

13 73 ms 71 ms 72 ms CHGOBBRJ01-so200.R2.ch.cox.net [68.1.0.46]

14 97 ms 97 ms 97 ms 68.1.1.108

15 100 ms 99 ms 99 ms provbbrc02-pos0100.rd.ri.cox.net [68.1.0.43]

16 99 ms 103 ms 110 ms NYRKBBRJ01-so000.R2.ny.cox.net [68.1.0.51]

17 97 ms 96 ms 97 ms mrfdbbrc01-pos0102.rd.dc.cox.net [68.1.1.8]

18 96 ms 96 ms 97 ms mrfddsrj01-so000.rd.dc.cox.net [68.1.1.5]

19 100 ms 96 ms 97 ms ip68-100-0-162.dc.dc.cox.net [68.100.0.162]

20 97 ms 99 ms 99 ms ip68-100-0-28.dc.dc.cox.net [68.100.0.28]

21 98 ms 99 ms 97 ms ip68-100-1-130.dc.dc.cox.net [68.100.1.130]

22 109 ms 106 ms 109 ms zoyaphoto.com [68.101.40.34]

Trace complete.

stomachmonkey · 11-05-2005, 10:28 AM

Get rid of the script,

http://www.squid-cache.org/mail-archive/squid-users/200301/1333.html

It appears to be some sort of proxy redirect.

Make a copy of your index.htm, call it indextest.htm, take the script out and re post it.

I have to run out for a bit but if you do that I'll check the test file to see if it eliminates the problem.

Scott

Scott

id10t · 11-05-2005, 04:32 PM

Fine for me. Mozilla 1.7.something on Debian sarge, also checked from my iMac - fine again, Firefox 1.0something on Debian sarge/ppc

island_dude · 11-09-2005, 05:13 AM

I was on another planet for a while. I am back now.

Stomachemonkey, I want to thank you for uncovering this issue. I have (finally) been able to follow your suggestion. I removed all traces of the proxy script in a copy of the index.html that is named indextest.htm

Here is the great test: If going to http://zoyaphoto.com simply times out for you folks, let me know if you fare better with http://zoyaphoto.com/indextest.htm

If it works, it would explain a lot. You can't know how much I appreciate the help.

island_dude · 11-10-2005, 12:01 PM

I seem to be having a conversation with myself here.

Well, I had some folks test the file with the scripts pulled out. No Joy. It was a good theory though.

I have to admit that I am starting to really hit my limit on this one. I can't even begin to guess why this is happening at this point.

stomachmonkey · 11-10-2005, 04:24 PM

Just tried it and no joy. That is really bizzare. Time to switch ISP.

Sorry it did not work.

I'll pass the url onto a webmaster buddy of mine. Maybe he can find something.

Scott

jrdavid68 · 11-10-2005, 05:04 PM

Still sounds like a DNS problem to me. Is there a Verizon user here that could plug in some different values for DNS and see what happens? I'm on SBC DSL and all is well. Here are my DNS values:

63.203.35.55
206.13.28.12

island_dude · 11-10-2005, 05:13 PM

Scott, I really appreciate the help. Let me know what your webmaster buddy says.

Jrdavid68, I thought that this was a dns issue at first, but the behavior is the same even when the user accesses the website using the IP address (68.101.40.34). Frankly,it is possible that there is more than one issue here. Stranger things have happend to me.

I'll keep posting any new ideas.

Paul