In reply to a post by Memski:

The only filtering software I use is Spybot and ESET. I removed them both but it doesn't change anything (have re-installed them now, obviously).

Can you ping the site?
What does a Traceroute tell you?

Connected the website, they say they have

"...moved to a new load balancer in the last few weeks and we have had one or two si,ilar reports..."

Looks like possibly their own website blocking certain traffic?

They are getting back to me.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

HI there

I got this problem as well, been driving me mad trying everything I can think of, caches, peerblock etc etc and nothing solves it, it first happened end November, then ok for a few weeks, then again since mid December, my suspicion is always VM but their "helpline" useless as always, hope someone can come up with a definite clear solution soon, I need those team predictors desparately!!

DNS is not the issue. Per a screen shot that Memski posted here, the browser clearly states 'Waiting for reply...'. This means it has managed to connect, but for what ever reason, the TCP session is then being screwed up.

If was to guess at what this issue is, it feels like an MTU problem/mismatch. I can't be sure though. If I do 2 traceroutes with packet sizes 1500 and 1501, I get this:

Text

1 23 45 67 89 1011 1213 1415

# traceroute -nI 46.38.178.219 1500 traceroute to 46.38.178.219 (46.38.178.219), 30 hops max, 1500 byte packets...  7  92.52.76.246  30.004 ms  32.120 ms  34.588 ms 8  92.52.77.95  36.878 ms  38.965 ms  41.214 ms  9  46.38.178.219  41.885 ms  41.925 ms  41.949 ms# traceroute -nI 46.38.178.219 1501 traceroute to 46.38.178.219 (46.38.178.219), 30 hops max, 1501 byte packets...  6  195.66.226.116  22.364 ms  24.576 ms  26.999 ms 7  92.52.76.204  30.588 ms  32.935 ms  35.315 ms  8  92.52.77.95  37.863 ms  40.063 ms  42.362 ms 9  * * * 10  * * *11  * * *

This is suggesting that the server does not like fragmented packets, and fragmentation is linked with MTU mismatches. I get the same result with www.google.com, never had any issues there. And www.bbc.co.uk seems perfectly happy with large fragmented pings.

Though one very weird result of the above (which I have just noticed as of writing) is that hop 7 is actually a completely different IP address depending if the packet size is 1500 or 1501 - anyone ever seen that before? This anomaly (if indeed it is one) resides clearly in the realm of RackSpace hosting (their network).

I'm not suggesting this is the issue btw, but everything else so far in this thread has been ruled out, and I have seen no mention of MTU, so figured I'd throw this out there anyway incase anyone has further ideas.

Got reply from them yesterday:

This is very strange - we have had a few users say this - you're the fourth case now.

We did move to a new load balancer solution around the time you're experiencing problems - that could be the cause.

I've sent your case to Ed - our tech director - and he'll doubtless come back with some tests for you to carry out.

I'll be in touch soon.

Apologies for the issues you've faced.

So let you know when I hear soemthing back.........

I have 2 computers at home. both connected to the same router and Virgin broadband

The computer that DOESN'T connect to website runs on Windows7

The computer that DOES connect to website runs on Windows XP

Is the answer that simple?

I have been having a similar issue with another site which is behind a Rackspace cloud load balancer. The site is www.blueinc.co.uk. When I try to connect, I am getting around 4k downloaded and then nothing.

I've contacted Rackspace about this and they have told me that it must be something wrong with my PC but I do not think that this is unique to me. It works fine on my laptop and phone, just not on my PC (64-bit, Windows 7, Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller network card).

Can any of you that have the same issue as this access the site above? Also, what network card do you all have? I'm wondering if there is a particular architecture that Rackspace cloud load balancers do not like.

In reply to a post by branners:

I have been having a similar issue with another site which is behind a Rackspace cloud load balancer. The site is www.blueinc.co.uk. When I try to connect, I am getting around 4k downloaded and then nothing.

I've contacted Rackspace about this and they have told me that it must be something wrong with my PC but I do not think that this is unique to me. It works fine on my laptop and phone, just not on my PC (64-bit, Windows 7, Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller network card).

Can any of you that have the same issue as this access the site above? Also, what network card do you all have? I'm wondering if there is a particular architecture that Rackspace cloud load balancers do not like.

Works fine on my PC (win7 64bit, though Enta). I switched it to 100 items per page to increase the load a bit.