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[rwm32]

Remember the 'digestauth' problem with SpeedTouch firmwares older than 6.2.n.n and IE7?

Here's a little oddity which suggests that even in the newest 7.n.n.n Thomson firmwares all is not well when interfacing with IE7.  Sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

As I've posted in an earlier thread, I've had intermittent disconnection problems over the last couple of weeks.  I have tried all the usual things (3 different routers, put in a new microfilter, unplugged phone) to no avail. My ISP's been pretty good about pursuing the problem, and I'm typing this while waiting for an OpenReach engineer to show up. The disconnections happen randomly: no pattern in terms of time of day or night; no dependencies on actual use of the line; no link to SN margins.

So far, so good.

Now for the Kiwis.  On Monday England's cricketers pulled off a win against NZ which had looked more than a little unlikely on Sunday morning. As luck would have it (so I thought), the disconnections on my line made it almost impossible to follow the match on the CricInfo website -- the line dropped and the modem rebooted several times an hour.  At first, it just seemed as if the line problems had suddenly intensified.  But during the lunch interval, things improved: no disconnections. When play resumed, so did the disconnections!  What's more, swapping between my ST546v6 and my TG585v7 made no difference. Time to start the detective work.

Possible explanations:

Either Thomson routers are Kiwi supporters and struggle to transmit data showing NZ throwing away a winning position; or (possibly slightly more plausibly) some interaction between my web activity and the routers is triggering a reboot.

It turns out that with IE7, both the ST546v6 (with 6.1.4.6 firmware) and the TG585v7 (with 7.n.n.n firmware) fall over when I browse to the England-NZ scorecard or match bulletin pages on CricInfo.  This is pretty consistently reproducible (happens with around 90% of attempts to access those pages) and is independent of whether I set digestauth=disabled in the ST546v6.

Using Firefox 2.0, the problem goes away.

Using a Netgear DG834v3, there is no disconnection problem even with IE7.  The relevant pages are displayed with the 'errors on page' flag at the bottom left of the window, but the line stays up.

As far as I've yet been able to determine, my Trend Micro AV and firewall have no effect on this behaviour (on or off).

So I'd say there is a strong indication here of another Thomson-specific problem lurking out there in handling IE7.

Sadly, although I can now look forward to uninterrupted CricInfo coverage of the Kiwis being thrashed at Trent Bridge next week courtesy of Firefox, I still have the underlying problem with random disconnections unrelated to IE7 and sports -- here's hoping that the OR engineer shows up soon...

rwm32

[roseway]

That's rather fascinating. I don't know if it's relevant, but the cricinfo site has scripts which link with forrestersurveys.com and doubleclick.net. Maybe there's something in those scripts which IE7 doesn't handle properly. (I'm grasping at straws here, because I really have no idea.)

[kitz]

hmmm  and following on from the above (again just throwing in my 2p)..  I had a router once that used to have a hissy fit and d/c if too many TCP connections were open.

[rwm32]

hmmm  and following on from the above (again just throwing in my 2p)..  I had a router once that used to have a hissy fit and d/c if too many TCP connections were open.

Aaaah.  Worth following up on that.  AFAIK Firefox doesn't open as many connections as IE7.  I'd still be inclined to think it's a generic Thomson f/w glitch, in view of the 585v7 behaving the same way as the 546v6.

When /he said optimistically/ my BB is back up on Monday I'll try and find a moment to check this out further.  The OR engineer went off to the exchange yesterday afternoon to do a lift&shift.... and to cut a boring story short, we're waiting for the correct spare part for the port or card on the DSLAM to find its way through BT's logistics.

56k does kind of remind one how exciting it can be watching grass grow or paint dry...