I have been accessing Rebderosity just now, from my work email address, which accesses the WWW by a proxy. Until yesterday I had no trouble posting messages. But from some time yesterday daytime (I am in England), I can read Renderosity pages normally easily, but when I try to send a messages, my Netscape 4 says "trying to contact www.renderosity.com" for ever and ever and in the end I have to quit out of it.

But this message went through OK quickly. But to end this message I used Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This site does often - but not always - seem to run slower on Netscape than it does on IE. At least from my experience - which is kind of odd, since IE usually handles text better, but NS handles graphics more quickly!

The site does get loaded down at times and respond more slowly, or possibly even time out. But as to the differences between browsers, I have no idea.

I get alot of "Server returned an invalid respsonse" errors using IE.

Interesting. Never seen that one myself Jeff. I run IE 5.5 at home. On a related issue, we have the new server in and running in the co-location facility. We are currently getting everthing installed and configured, and hope to have it online in a week or so. This will move us from a dual Sparc/400MHz Sun Solaris workstation, to a dual P3/1GHz Linux PC, or about 3 times faster we figure.

Oh man!!! Sounds very cool Russ. Clint

just hadda say: BWAHAHHAHAHAHHA! at the topic. :) immature, yes. but hey. :)

The latest situation is this: At work (Novell LAN and WWW access is through a proxy), with Netscape and with IE, sending a message to a trhead, and starting a new thread, stall and time out. But sending emailsto JeffH through Renderosity went through as normal. If this message gets in, then sending a message via IE via my dialup line st home, works. Is there any way that my department's postmaster@ at work could have set his server to make sending a message to Renderosity stall like that? Today at work I thoroughly wiped and nuked out my Netscape 4 installation and installed Netscape 4.7 instead, but the Renderosity message-sending bug persisted.

And that last message (from home) went in in a few seconds statim stat. What IS going on????

I forwarded your e-mails to rcook. I'm still unable to post messages with Netscape myself (on my machine).

The forum message posting uses the standard HTML {FORM} tags. Nothing special. No tricks. No scripts. That code hasn't changed in over a year. As to why it works in one location and not another, I have no idea. I already use Netscape on Linux at work with no problems, and will do further testing with Netscape on Windows at home and see if anything turns up.

As O said before, at work I access Netscape by a proxy. There might have been a netware software change recently Could it be that now when I send a message from work, your software is getting my university's main server's WWW proxy's name or address instead of my own name or address?

I think so, AA. I keep getting Proxy time-outs, not when posting but when opening messages and boards. NT 4.5 network here.

This trouble starting also seems to coincide with the first time I tried to get into the Renderosity chat-room at work. Chat failed to connect. Did it change something in my work department's server? But a few days ago I successfully Renderosity chatted at home.

Out of interest, have you tried a trace route from your two locations? (open a DOS box, and type "tracert www.renderosity.com" - without the quotations) It could be that different connection routes are being used, and one is slower or has more packet loss than the other. It's probably your University proxy, though. Having said that, connection speeds to Renderosity have been very intermittent the last couple of days for me here in Nottingham, with plenty of time-outs. Maybe it's rcook's 'massaging' of the new server that's doing it. ;-) BTW Anthony, have you checked to see if you can use a cable modem from your home? If you're in an urban or suburban area around Manchester, there's a good chance you can get connected. The internet is a whole different experience at high speed/bandwidth (as you probably know from the university connection), and you can stay online for as long as you like for a fixed fee of around 30-40 per month (includes cheaper than BT phone line and cable TV). Nowadays I can spend all day in the C&D forum, eh JeffH. ;-)

tracert www.renderosity.com from fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk caused this:- Tracing route to www.renderosity.com [208.138.126.5] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms <10 ms <10 ms gw-uodd.umist.ac.uk [130.88.125.250] 2 1 ms <10 ms <10 ms gw-umill.umist.ac.uk [130.88.98.11] 3 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms gw133.ee.umist.ac.uk [130.88.133.250] 4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms gw-metro.netnw.net.uk [194.66.23.250] 5 1 ms 2 ms 2 ms gw-man.netnw.net.uk [193.60.157.102] 6 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms manchester-bar.ja.net [146.97.40.177] 7 2 ms 2 ms 3 ms pos10-0.warr-scr.ja.net [146.97.35.45] 8 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms pos1-0.read-scr.ja.net [146.97.33.13] 9 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms pos1-0.lond-scr.ja.net [146.97.33.33] 10 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms london-bar1.ja.net [146.97.35.2] 11 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms us-gw.ja.net [193.63.94.96] 12 82 ms 80 ms 81 ms ny-pop.ja.net [193.62.157.10] 13 88 ms 82 ms 81 ms if-8-2.core1.NewYork.Teleglobe.net [207.45.196.141] 14 81 ms 86 ms 81 ms if-10-0.bb8.NewYork.Teleglobe.net [207.45.223.110] 15 82 ms 81 ms 81 ms sl-gw9-nyc-7-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.173.129] 16 82 ms 82 ms 82 ms sl-bb21-nyc-6-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.97] 17 83 ms 82 ms 82 ms sl-bb22-nyc-15-0-2480M.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.110] 18 81 ms 82 ms 81 ms acr1-serial6-0-0-0.NewYorknyr.cw.net [206.24.195.225] 19 107 ms 110 ms 109 ms acr1-loopback.Nashville.cw.net [208.172.114.61] 20 166 ms 224 ms 239 ms bar3-loopback.Nashville.cw.net [208.172.114.8] 21 113 ms 109 ms 107 ms renaissance-application-facili.Nashville.cw.net [208.175.64.202] 22 107 ms 107 ms 108 ms core-126-229.rentech.net [208.138.126.229] 23 154 ms 148 ms 117 ms www.renderosity.com [208.138.126.5] Trace complete.

I got that message in on my Netscape at work early morning 6 April 2001 by UK time, and it went thru in a few seconds. I tried to send another messageafterit, but it jammed and timed out as usual, and I got no more messages through from work that day.

I talked to our sys admin about this issue. He said it definately sounds like a proxy server issue. The forms for posting messages to the forums are multipart mime encoded, since you have the ability to upload images. It sounds like your proxy server is screening them out for some reason. If this is the case, there is nothing we can change on our end to "fix" it. It's in the configuration of your proxy server.

If the cause is proxy nuisance, likeliest I am not the only member to have this nuisance. I have had no trouble emailing via Renderosity. Is it possible for the method of posting messages to the forum to be alteted in one of these ways?:- (1) Only use multipart if there is an image in the message. (2) The user can choose between single-part and multipart modes. (3) Option to use single part, and if he uses single part, he must put the image temporarily on his web site and Renderosity uploads the image from there and tells the user that he can delete his temporary copy. My department's server at work is programmed not to relay messages received from outside. I was told that that is to stop it being used as a "pirates' harbour" for spamming and anonymous message sending. Could the abovementioned nuisance be a side-effect of that?

Posting messages to the forums has nothing to do with email relaying from the outside. It uses the HTML POST via the standard web port 80, and has nothing to do with SMTP on port 25 for relaying email. Multipart forms are standard HTML. It just sounds like your proxy has been misconfigured somehow.

Of course, it could just be that someone at the university thinks Anthony is spending too much work time here, and has put a filter in the way. ;-)

How come that (A) my messages to forums from work get stuck, but (B) my emails via Renderosity go through? I get the impression toth of them are messages sent from me to www.renderosity.com ; it is Renderosity, not me, that relays type (B) by email to its addresses, so that people can't find the members' email addresses to put them in a spam circulation list.

Forum posts use the multi-part HTML forms that I've already mentioned. Emails through Renderosity do not use a multi-part form.

It uses the HTML POST via the standard web port 80 I am emailing from home (early evening by UK time). My department's postmaster@ at work told me that a channel (40? 80?) on our department's WWW proxy is blocked as from about a fortnight ago because spammers had been using it as a backdoor to spam the department.

It could be that all that the proxy's operators can do is to porposely overload the channel, and thus at very slack times (early morning UK time = the middle of the night USA time) I got an occasional message through "when the pickets went for coffee". If one institution's server operators can do this, so can others; it would seem that we still need a way to let the user select another way than multipart to send those messages, to bypass this sort of nuisance blockading, if it is possible.

Thanks for the help PJF. It should be noted that a trace route although very helpful in trouble shooting gereal connections problems is based on the ICMP protocol and would not be effected by any type of proxy setting. The issue at hand seems to be that the proxy server that you are dealing with at work has it's zone config for the internet zone locked down when it comes to multi-part mime encoding. This is a mis-configuration and should be fixed. You are able to send via the email system as it is only mime/text instead of multi-part mime. This is also why you are able to send standard email (via port 25) to renderosity. We have around 50000 users on this site and the only time I hear of problems of this nature is when a proxy server is misconfigured. For example, there was an instance where most of @Home had the exact same problem. It ended up being the @Home proxy servers not being configured properly. Once I worked with their admins, all was resolved. I can definatively say that this is not a Renderosity problem, but a problem with your end of the pipe. Hope this helps. NegentopicMan Renderosity Systems Administrator

Not quite sure if that whole post is directed at me. If it is, may I humbly point out that it is Anthony with the connection problem, not myself. I suggested that Anthony try the trace route to rule out a possible connection problem from his work location. I realise a proxy configuration issue wouldn't affect a trace route, but at that stage it wasn't clear what the problem was. The blindingly fast speeds reported in that tracert (typical of university connections) show no problems. Though interestingly(ish), I make it to Renderosity in just 16 hops from Nottingham. I bet his home dialup speeds aren't so impressive. ;-)

Here is my tracert from home:- Tracing route to www.renderosity.com [208.138.126.5] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 104 ms 101 ms 100 ms anchor-du-54.access.demon.net [195.173.57.54] 2 100 ms 100 ms 100 ms anchor-core-1-fxp3.router.demon.net [195.173.57.251] 3 100 ms 100 ms 100 ms tele-backbone-1-ge022.router.demon.net [158.152.0.181] 4 190 ms 185 ms 190 ms ny1-backbone-1-ge020.router.demon.net [195.173.173.9] 5 185 ms 190 ms 185 ms ny1-border-1-210.router.demon.net [195.173.173.210] 6 185 ms 185 ms 185 ms sl-gw9-nyc-0-2.sprintlink.net [144.232.173.9] 7 185 ms 185 ms 185 ms sl-bb21-nyc-6-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.97] 8 185 ms 190 ms 185 ms sl-bb22-nyc-15-0-2480M.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.110] 9 190 ms 190 ms 185 ms acr1-serial6-0-0-0.NewYorknyr.cw.net [206.24.195.225] 10 210 ms 210 ms 210 ms acr1-loopback.Nashville.cw.net [208.172.114.61] 11 215 ms 210 ms 210 ms bar3-loopback.Nashville.cw.net [208.172.114.8] 12 215 ms 210 ms 210 ms renaissance-application-facili.Nashville.cw.net [208.175.64.202] 13 220 ms 220 ms 215 ms core-126-229.rentech.net [208.138.126.229] 14 215 ms 210 ms * www.renderosity.com [208.138.126.5] 15 210 ms 220 ms 235 ms www.renderosity.com [208.138.126.5] Trace complete.

Nope, the post was primarily for the benefit of Anthony. I was just saying thanks for the assist. I wish I could do something to fix the problem for you, but as is evidenced by the traceroute, you aren't having any latency problems, so once again, the problem would have to be with your proxy server. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.