Browser requests stopping in weird places

When I make web requests in any browser to a page that might have a lot of JavaScript references it seems like it'll get through them all or the last one and stop processing the page. I have to go to the address bar and hit enter again to load the page. This doesn't consistently happen. It seems like it goes through all JS files and stop at the last one and if I let it go it'll eventually (after a couple of minutes) stop trying and just stop.

I'm currently running Windows 7 RTM x64 (from MSDN).

Chad Moran

Posted 2009-09-22T14:02:52.123

Reputation: 111

I get this as well, though I have no idea what is causing it – Ivo Flipse – 2009-09-22T15:08:21.267

any example sites of where this is happening? – John T – 2009-10-06T16:28:14.777

Answers

What browser are you using and can you try a different one?

Also, you may want to check any Firewall / IDS and temporarily disable it. I recently fixed a problem where Norton Internet Security was blocking sites in the same way as you say and it turned out to be part of the program blocking it.

William Hilsum

Posted 2009-09-22T14:02:52.123

Reputation: 111 572

1I've tried IE8, Firefox 3.5, Chrome 3.0, Safari 4. I have no software firewall and hardware firewall is not the issue. – Chad Moran – 2009-09-22T14:11:19.643

Sounds more like a MTU issue to me.

First do a

ipconfig

and remember the value behind MTU, e.g. 1500.

Subtract 28, e.g. 1500-18=1472.

Use that value and try

ping -f -l 1472 www.google.com

if it says "packet needs to be fragmented" that's it.

Ludwig Weinzierl

Posted 2009-09-22T14:02:52.123

Reputation: 7 695

1+1 for MTU. I've seen issues just like this that turned out to be MTU related. Are you running firewalls that block ICMP? If so, try allowing all ICMP pass through, as ICMP is required for MTU negotiation. – Bryan – 2009-11-21T12:25:09.473

1Edit: Just read your comment about no firewall against Wil's post, so disregard my comments about ICMP blocking. Still agree with Ludwig's answer though. – Bryan – 2009-11-21T12:26:51.000

I get similar hang-ups that mostly appear to be due to third-party-site requests.

Eg, when I load a page from superuser.com, the browser also requests files from sstatic.net, ajax.googleapis.com, www.gravatar.com, www.google-analytics.com and edge.quantserve.com. Sometimes the browser "hangs" trying to access google-analytics.com, and the page won't finish loading until it times out, or I force a reload.

A temporary routing problem between me and any of those other servers can look like a browser hang. Reloading the page forces the browser to reconnect to all those sites, so whatever the issue was may go away on reconnection.

Root cause could certainly be MTU-related, as Ludwig suggests, but I don't think that's the only trouble that would cause the symptom.

quack quixote

Posted 2009-09-22T14:02:52.123

Reputation: 37 382