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We always have these on Reddit, but Reddit just claims it's not the servers, or at least it can't be solved by throwing more servers at it. What normally causes these errors? Is it likely in the code? Anyone had experience with these errors on their system? Reddit is open sources so we as a community want to try and fix it, but I don't know if I can be sure that the code is the culprit here.

How would we figure out the culprit? Maybe there are hints in logs somewhere?

It is fine to answer completely knowing that I may not have access to something, but at least then I would have know what we need to see to move forward on this.

Edit: I think this is relevant to coders, it's nice to know that if I get 504s I should call the network guy, not troubleshoot my code, for example.

Edit: Ok so it got migrated, well at least someone took care of that for me! Thanks!

MetaGuru
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    Isn't 504 a gateway timeout? If so, isn't a network or configuration problem the most likely cause? If so, this is probably best asked somewhere else (maybe http://webmasters.stackexchange.com, or http://serverfault.com) – R. Martinho Fernandes Mar 14 '11 at 18:20
  • @Martinho Fernandes that's what I thought, but I think the question is still relevant to software developers – MetaGuru Mar 14 '11 at 18:37

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From the RFC 10.5.5 504 Gateway Timeout

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server specified by the URI (e.g. HTTP, FTP, LDAP) or some other auxiliary server (e.g. DNS) it needed to access in attempting to complete the request.

  Note: Note to implementors: some deployed proxies are known to
  return 400 or 500 when DNS lookups time out.

It could be some 3d party resource the site you're actually making a request to with your browser doesn't admin. Even something like an ad, or sidebar. Tools like Firebug and Chrome developer tools (also see Daniel Miesslers' awesome article on speed tracer)

Ben Lutgens
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