Forum not loading problem back.

I haven't replied lately simply because to do so caused too much frustration; however, I realized today that I can browse freely now! A tracert shows that my route is no longer going through ATT.

To someone who knows: Why would I have been going through the same IPs (all the att.net ones) no matter which DNS server I was using? I tried OpenDNS, Google, and my default ISP, each after flushing the DNS cache, and all three went through att.net. Who/what controls the route?

I do not believe this is a routing problem. Here is why.

I eliminated browser as a factor entirely and wrote a program that connects to the forum and downloads the home page. It always connects fine. It always sends the HTTP request fine. It frequently hangs waiting on a the reply. Sometimes it simply waits a while, and then suddenly gets all the data in a big burst. Sometimes I eventually get a socket disconnect from the web server.

Now, it is possible for the network routing between me (and many other people) and the forum server(s) to be broken in an asymmetric way. In this case, that would mean that my packets would get from me to the forum web server, but the server's response packets would not be able to get back to me. But if this were the case, I would have problems getting the initial handshake response back when I tried to connect my socket to the server. The fact that I can always connect and always send my request data immediately suggests that the problem is with the server's ability to send me a response.

This may be a problem with the web server, but in my experience, it is more likely that the problem is with the forum software. I consider it likely that the forum is getting tied up in something, possibly database queries, and not providing data for the web server to send back to me.

Edit: After a lot of poking the forum with my program when I have this problem in the browser, I finally got a socket error on connect. This could mean there really is a routing problem, but I continue to usually be able to connect and send without error, but either experience a long delay or out right failure on attempts to receive data. My most recent attempt was disconnected by the server. ("An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host".)

Edit 2: This morning I'm having a pretty bad experience with the forums, and I am back to consistently connecting and requesting. I am starting to think the connection error above was a fluke. Here's a typical output from my program, showing near-immediate connection, but a significant delay in obtaining data. The parenthetical numbers on the right are elapsed seconds since the start of the operation. Notice the more than 9 seconds between the request and the start of data received. Most of the time right now I never get any data back - instead I get disconnected by the remote host after around 350 seconds.

>>> getPage("boards.cityofheroes.com",80,"forumdisplay .php?f=547")
Connected... (0.341)
Request sent. (0.341)
Receiving...
-> 1516 bytes (10.081)
-> 4436 bytes (10.141)
-> 14676 bytes (10.323)
-> 18148 bytes (10.381)
-> 21620 bytes (10.388)
-> 25092 bytes (10.438)
-> 28564 bytes (10.496)
-> 32036 bytes (10.497)
-> 35508 bytes (10.553)
-> 38980 bytes (10.560)
-> 42452 bytes (10.561)
-> 45924 bytes (10.611)
-> 49396 bytes (10.617)
-> 52868 bytes (10.623)
-> 56340 bytes (10.668)
-> 59812 bytes (10.675)
-> 63284 bytes (10.682)
-> 66756 bytes (10.685)
-> 69388 bytes (10.687)
-> 70800 bytes (10.727)
-> 73624 bytes (10.733)
-> 76448 bytes (10.740)
-> 80684 bytes (10.746)
-> 83508 bytes (10.748)
-> 86332 bytes (10.791)
-> 89156 bytes (10.797)
-> 91980 bytes (10.803)
-> 99040 bytes (10.811)
-> 100452 bytes (10.816)
-> 101864 bytes (10.848)
-> 104688 bytes (10.855)
-> 107512 bytes (10.861)
-> 110336 bytes (10.867)
-> 114572 bytes (10.875)
-> 117396 bytes (10.877)
-> 120220 bytes (10.912)
-> 121722 bytes (10.918)
Disconnected. (10.920)

Well I am finding it more rare to actually connect than to not. I am having whole days unable to get anything CoH forum/NcSoft account related to load.

It is really annoying especially when I want to see the Sever Status page as like now

I have read this whole thread and am still not sure if it is me or them that is causing the problem. I am able to connect to every other web site in the know universe that I try except CoH so I can only assume (that word again) that it is them.

Only had this problem for about a month and all the years before were just normal.

Apologies for not bringing anything new to the party (non techie here), but am so frustrated with this, that really I needed a sympathetic shoulder to wail on

It has taken me three days to get into this forum trying to post this! It is getting real lame, real quick!

Thanks

I'm having page loading issues last 3-4 days too.

OK, more info. I started looking at my page loads using Fiddler. I can see some interesting things right away. One of the most interesting is that I can see my Windows desktop Server Status widget connecting to this URL

http://www.cityofheroes.com/servers/...?1302632110146

while I'm waiting on forum pages to load. I can't say for sure that this never suffers delays, but now that I think about it, the widget hasn't freaked out lately at any time I haven't actually lost my internet connectivity. This is another tick in the column that suggests that this could be hangups in some shared back-end for the forums and/or main page. I can get to the server status URL consistently, with no delays, even when I cannot load forum pages or the game's main page.

Here's my attempt to connect to a reply post on another thread.

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/newre...eply&p=3585492
200 OK (text/html)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/vbulletin_important.css?v=386
200 OK (text/css)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/vbulletin_editor.css?v=386
200 OK (text/css)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/yui/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js?v=386
No response

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/yui/connection/connection-min.js?v=386
200 OK (application/x-javascript)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/vbulletin_global.js?v=386
200 OK (application/x-javascript)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/vbulletin_menu.js?v=386
200 OK (application/x-javascript)

GET http://boards.cityofheroes.com/clientscript/vbulletin_textedit.js?v=386
200 OK (application/x-javascript)

Check that out. In the middle of a bunch of "200 OK" messages (which means I got the file back) I got a file that received no data at all.

Here's the detailed info on that connection.

Request Count: 1
Bytes Sent: 5,187 (headers:5187; body:0)
Bytes Received: 0 (headers:0; body:0)

ACTUAL PERFORMANCE
--------------
ClientConnected: 13:22:15.164
ClientBeginRequest: 13:22:15.170
ClientDoneRequest: 13:22:15.173
Gateway Determination: 0ms
DNS Lookup: 0ms
TCP/IP Connect: 58ms
HTTPS Handshake: 0ms
ServerConnected: 13:22:15.231
FiddlerBeginRequest: 13:22:15.231
ServerGotRequest: 13:22:15.234
ServerBeginResponse: 00:00:00.000
ServerDoneResponse: 00:00:00.000
ClientBeginResponse: 00:00:00.000
ClientDoneResponse: 00:00:00.000

As you can see, Fiddler is agreeing with my little Python program. I sent a request, then started a request to receive data, and never got anything back.

Here's the fun part. Eventually that jscript file timed out, and then my browser rendered the rest of the page ... four minutes and sixteen seconds later. (Notice that the very first request is the body of the web page, and I got it in its entirety. It was actually a script on the page that failed.)

I really do think this is an infrastructure problem on the hosting site.

Do you know if you ever get so far as to submit a HTTP request? Or do you croak even before then? If you croak before submitting a request, then it's a different problem. If you get to submit a request and never get a response, then it's basically the same as what I see, but it sounds like you fail more consistently.

It's possible that something is between all of us and NCSoft's web servers is eating data that's supposed to be coming back to our browsers. If that's what's up, it really should either be so transient that the connections and data streams recover due to retry or so consistent that it sometimes nukes connection handshakes. I did see one connection failure, but just one, so it's hard to know if that was this problem or something else that may have been transient. I've not yet seen my side send out a SYN that didn't give me a SYN-ACK.

I'm now getting a lot of hanging that eventually resolves itself half the time if I wait long enough. And when it does resolve, all the other open tabs waiting also resolve.

Which tells me it's more a forum server/software problem.

I seem to have fixed it by trying different DNS servers. The default with Comcast was bad, as was Google's DNS.

Open DNS seems to be working, though.

This is the first time I've been able to access the forums or the main website in days. I also use Comcast.

First time in two weeks I can see the site or the boards, I am with Comcast as well.

First time I've been able to connect in about 4 days. And was having intermittent trouble before that for about a week. It's getting quite frustrating. I sure hope someone at Paragon/NCSoft is looking into it...

Thanks, UberGuy, for investigating this. Your work is appreciated.

I was wrong about the DNS thing- the problem is persisting, no matter which DNS server I use.

New info. I've confirmed that even when I cannot load forum pages or the main site pages, I can still get at the server status XML feed. That's hosted on the same IP address as the main page, and will load, repeatedly, even when the main page will not.

This is not a network problem.

Similar problems. I get connected fine from home. At work the browser seems to connect to the server, but then doesnt get a reply and just sits there waiting for one. Occasionally it will respond normally.

I am on Cincinnati Bell DSL and I have this issue. I tried using the Google DNS server, too. No change. I'm thinking this might be an issue on their end, or someone has been DDOSing the forum server on the HTTP port. I did get a security certificate error when I tried logging in the forums on my phone, but I don't know if that is a related error.

The SSL error probably just means your phone browser does not trust the signer of this site's SSL certificate.

Today I can access the forums- I've changed nothing on my end.

I wish they'd tell us what they changed on their end today.

I'm still having problems

Hammering the boards with a refresh when it doesn't load in a timely manner is as effective as a DNS flush. Conclussion: DNS has nothing to do with it. It's the boards.

Yep, that's how I get it to work. Click click click click. Sometimes I give up. Today I persevered just to post this.

It's been working very well for me all day today.