h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hate size restrictions. Just had to rework someone's code today because it was sending information in a GET format instead of POST. Sheesh!

Yes! exactly the same unfortunately.

It sometimes, although not always, happens with longer fora postings as well - although I am not reknowned for making those overlong!

shazz

I don't know if this is relevant, but I tried out ftp to put spimcoot's cartoon in the h2g2 Post folder at h2g2 and that worked fine.

Anyway - we are trying everything we can think of and asking our tech friend as I type.

Hi Pastey

shazz

Our tech friend says it cannot be this end seeing as we can simultaneously post things to his fora and we can logon and post small things to h2g2.

We have the MTU setting disabled - so there is no maximum.
TM tried over the ISDN line and that worked fine.
Unfortunately I am not able to use that and it is a lot slower.

shazz

Well - it just worked very fast and perfectly for about 15 minutes giving me a chance to upload new items including the wordsearch which is very code-rich.

Two minutes ago, it stopped again and reported a time-out!

I've changed nothing since last night, honest!

shazz

I now get a time-out at work which is ridiculous because I edited a large entry about 15 minutes ago on a windows2000-machine somewhere in the office! And I signed off neatly so... ???

I received this error :

NOT IMPLEMENTED
The server is unable to perform the method Forum?id=48887&option=&thread=209449&post=2408852&_sk=classic&_si=h2g2 at this time.

TM.

Trying to post the big one again...

Jim,

Let me try to give you as much relevant info as I can.

We have two Windows2000 Professional PC's connected to the internet through a LynkSys hub(this is one of the most used boxes there are atm). We do not have the "Share internet Connection"-box ticked because we do not share the connection, the hub does that for us. Both pc's have 'Assign IP-address automatically' ticked.

We can post to every forum we have tried except on h2g2, and then except when the entry is more than about 250 characters(256 perhaps ).

I have tried to post at work on a Windows2000 machine with a standard configuration(just like we have at home) and it worked just fine. At work I am behind firewalls, my connection goes through hubs, routers, switches, etcetera and still it works fine. This leads me to conclude that Windows2000 has nothing to do with our problem. Furthermore, I have been able to post/preview/etcetera on my Windows2000 machine at home until recently. I have also tried to update an entry over the ISDN-connection I have at home(my backup-connection) and this does work as it should. This would lead me to suspect that the hub does something wrong but I cannot explain why I am able to post to every stupid forum in the world except for h2g2...

This is especially true because Shazz already posted here today, that she was able to preview/edit for a little while this morning. All of a sudden it stopped working however. Again, this indicates that our network/setup has nothing to do with the problem. It either works or it doesn't(well that's what I believe after 24 years of systemsengineering ). So in my opinion only two causes are left : it must be either my cable-connection or their must be something wrong at h2g2. My cable-connection could be the problem but again : only if it failed to update/preview completely, not when it "sometimes works". Further more, this cableconnection has served us well so far and we never had a problem with it, the outgoing email may be somewhat unreliable sometimes but I don't think that a bad smtp-server can cause these problems on h2g2.

Now, just for your information : there has been a problem with MY login(not just editing, the whole lot) over two years ago. The problem then was that I posted both at worked and at home and I apparently didn't logoff on the one machine before logging on to the other one. Even after I had done just that, the problem remained until Aby and Peta solved it at the h2g2-offices. Apparently a switch that should be turned off wasn't and kept me from signing on.

I have consulted network-specialists at work, I have spoken with our own Kasteel-networkmanager, etcetera. None of them believe that the problem lies on our side. Because I am a systems-analyst, I have taken the logical approach when it comes to testing every possible aspect of this problem and I am getting nowhere.

Windows2000 : other pc's work fine behind routers etcetera.
Cable-connection : always worked fine, still works fine for everything else so is very unlikely to be the problem.
LinkSys : works like a dream and see previous line.

This is basically everything that we use for our h2g2-activities.

Can you shed some more light on this as it is obviously very inconvinient for Shazz to not be able to do the Post time and again.


Thanx in advance,

TM.

And NOW it DOWS work! You tell me, I'm flabbergasted! There is no logic to this at all.

TM.

Perhaps it's just sulking?

TM - the whole of h2g2 just went on the blink for a few moments earlier.

shazz

The beeb servers in general seem to have been playing up recently.

O.K. In that case forget the time-out I copied into the posting. That was work. At home we simply get "DNS server not found".

Now, I could believe that it was us, but shouldn't that mean that postings to a thread go wrong no matter what ? I mean we can read everything here, we can sign on, we can even post small items(entries, previews) without a hitch. This is two-way-traffic and we only have problems when we do a "Submit"... It still looks like a problem with either the h2g2/bbc technical setup, or (more likely perhaps) with some switch in the database over there.



TM.

It's no switch in the database. There's no difference between your accounts and anyone elses. It sounds (to me) like the problem you had two years ago was that your account got locked out, but it's a long time ago, so I couldn't say.

I've emailed you with something else to try, to see if we can narrow it down.

Thanx, I'll check it and get back to you.

CYa,

TM.

Shazz, you seem to have the same problem I had with XP after replacing my gateway pc with a switch+router.

The probem seemed to be with the parameter MTU-size that is buried deep in the registry. On the pc's it was set to 1500, and also in the router. On a FAQ of the router-site I found a question about not being able to send mail. This was resolved by setting the MTUsize in the router to 1400 and adding in XP-registry lots of things like black-hole detection. This solved the problem.

Hi Marjin
I relay this to TM, although we checked the setting for the MTU size restriction and it was actually disabled! If this was in force, how come I could actually get something to load easily earlier today - the Post wordsearch is quite a huge pile of coding!


shazz

Well you seem to have people who know what they're talking about now anyway!



Mel

Hi Marijn,

Thanks for the info. I am already working on the problem with Jim. The problem with the MTU-solution is that - as Shazz said - it is disabled in the router, and my Win2000-machine worked fine before Shazz' PC had to have the harddisk replaced. I did a full clean install of Win2000 on her machine too(she ran ME before the crash) and somewhere around that time everything started to go haywire. If the MTU has to be altered, then how come I have worked on my pc without problems for about a year ?

Hmmmmm, Tricky...

TM.

Just a short one to get it back up and because I have to go out again.
I had the problem only with XP, not with 98 at the same time. It took a number of tweaks in the registry all related somehow with MTU and sizes somewhere between source and destination. I will try to find out which ones I changed when I get back.

TM, Shazz,
have you ever checked the tweaks from http://www.winguides.com/registry/ ?
Especially http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/645/

I have set EnablePMTUBHDetect = "1" instead of 0.

"Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. We cannot guarantee that problems resulting from modifications to the registry can be solved. Use the information provided at your own risk."