Internet browsing issues - Dumb switch a plausible culprit?

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Oubadah

676 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 143609 20-Apr-2014 21:52

I don't recall exactly when it started, but for several weeks I've been having issues loading webpages. The majority of the time they work, but it was happening often enough to get really, really annoying. When it happened, the pages would either:

- Be mostly normal but missing certain elements.
- Only load as a 'sleleton' like so:

- Or not load at all:

It seemed to happen at random on any site. It even happened on Geekzone today. I tried to load it and I got the "Chrome could not find" error. Then I clicked refresh twice and got the skeleton of the site, and on the third refresh it finally loaded the full site. Some sites take may retries to open, and some won't open no matter how many times I tried.

I took all the obvious steps to troubleshoot, including the disabling of Adblock/extensions, using different browsers and different PCs with different NICs, disabling AV etc. etc. I even tried a completely different modem and router combo. It was not until I finally bypassed my 24 port unmanaged switch that the issue seemed to disappear.

Now, I've only had the switch removed for a day and I'll need to give it longer before I'm entirely convinced, but usually I would have encountered the bug by now - all pages have been loading perfectly.

What are the chances of a switch causing such issues with web browsing? All the time I was streaming podcasts from the web, and DVDs to various PCs and devices from my NAS without a hitch. Even when I hit a page that wouldn't open, web streams on the same PC using the same browser were never interrupted. And bear in mind it wasn't just the one PC on one particular switch port that had the issue (as I said, I had it on other machines) . Been using the same switch (TL-SG1024) since 2011.

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1497 posts

Uber Geek

# 1028387 20-Apr-2014 22:12

I'm going to stab a guess it's that you have the port speed hard set on the PC (to say 100Mbit/Full Duplex) and the switch being dumb will be "Auto-Speed/Auto-Duplex" ... if they don't match then you'll get "100Mbit/Half-Duplex" (cause it can't auto negotiate the duplex properly so will default to half) and a shed load of collisions, dropped packets etc.

Try setting the NIC to Auto/Auto and see how it goes.

Oubadah

676 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028391 20-Apr-2014 22:20

Mark: I'm going to stab a guess it's that you have the port speed hard set on the PC (to say 100Mbit/Full Duplex) and the switch being dumb will be "Auto-Speed/Auto-Duplex" ... if they don't match then you'll get "100Mbit/Half-Duplex" (cause it can't auto negotiate the duplex properly so will default to half) and a shed load of collisions, dropped packets etc.

Try setting the NIC to Auto/Auto and see how it goes.

That was one of the things I checked. All my NICs were already set to auto negotiate.

richms

22888 posts

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# 1028399 20-Apr-2014 22:57

Have had similar things happen with a dumb 8 port cisco gigabit switch at work, Long latency when arping things, first ping to anything was 100s of ms before coming right, browsing was hit and miss. Put up with that for a few days figuring it would go away with a reboot, finally rebooted and it persisted but was too busy to troubleshoot, next day network was dead, had link but nothing was arping. tried unplugging and pluging the cable and nothing happened.

Rebooted the dumb switch and everything came right. Was up for years, and has been up for months since that with no problems showing. Not sure what it took to provoke the problem.

Richard rich.ms

Oubadah

676 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028440 21-Apr-2014 00:36

Uh oh, it just happened twice with the switch still disconnected. There goes my switch theory. Any ideas what else this could be? I'm kind of running out of options here.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
65308 posts

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Geekzone

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# 1028515 21-Apr-2014 11:03

One person supports this post

What ISP are you using? This bit of information may be more important than you think...

Oubadah

676 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028524 21-Apr-2014 11:36

freitasm: What ISP are you using? This bit of information may be more important than you think...

I'm on Slingshot's unlimited plan. I did check the Slingshot forum here in case there were other people experiencing similar issues, but if there were, I didn't find them.

TwoSeven

1401 posts

Uber Geek

# 1028552 21-Apr-2014 12:22

The first issue could be that the CSS file(s) are not being loaded onto the page. This can be from poor site design as some vendors will put their CSS on another server, also if the site is hosting advertising, this can also be an issue. In effect the other servers fail to respond in time so only the site content loads, but not the CSS (which is the layout and graphics).

The other message in my case (which is similar) is because the DNS response does not come back quickly enough for the site, or not as expected. I have this issue with my current wireless router - it started occurring more frequently after I moved to a faster internet connection. I can't pin it own to the device, but any excuse to upgrade I suspect.

Software Engineer

SCM

457 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028553 21-Apr-2014 12:23

One person supports this post

Modem/router dying causing this issue maybe?

Have you tried another modem?

kornflake

404 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028575 21-Apr-2014 13:20

I would suggest the unmanaged switch, would either be slow to, or not pass packets at all. Not drop some, but allow other packets through. Are your dns addresses correct, I.e. the latest one's your ISP has published?

toyonut

1508 posts

Uber Geek

# 1028607 21-Apr-2014 15:56

One person supports this post

Was just about to suggest that. What DNS are you using? Can you try to put your ISP's DNS servers in manually either on the computer or on the router/modem?
My parents have had similar issues and somewhere between manually specifying the DNS settings on the modem and updating its firmware, the issue has been resolved.
May just be time for a new modem, even just a test one to see if that fixes the problem.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

robjg63

3019 posts

Uber Geek

# 1028639 21-Apr-2014 17:32

SCM: Modem/router dying causing this issue maybe?

Have you tried another modem?

My first thought as well. Router on the way out. They never seem to just fail - they start doing flakey things for a while first. I have twice wasted too much time trying to resolve exactly what was described by the op, eventually to find replacing the router just fixed it. For the record get a draytek router. They seem very solid.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

Oubadah

676 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028843 22-Apr-2014 00:42

It barely happened all day, but it went on a spree just now. Had to refresh 5+ times to get onto this site.

As I said in my first post, I've already tried switching modem/router. At first I was using a Vigor 120 + PFSense, and now I'm on a TD-8840 (acting as both modem and router). Made absolutely no different.

The DNS servers were correct in both cases.

202.180.64.10
202.180.64.11

EDIT: Wow, it's going crazy tonight. I think it's random, but here are some examples of pages it just blocked:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112950758/how-bird-wings-evolve-from-raptor-limbs-091813/
http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/273812-30-cant-find-ethernet-controller
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11241676

kiwirock

652 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1028870 22-Apr-2014 03:13

Does the same on a different PC (different NIC), or ethernet cable, or even different browser?

You don't have another device with the same IP address (if set static) on your local LAN by accident?

Tried disabling your anti-virus software to see if it's intercepting correctly?

Can your router keep a log so you can check to see if you're having any sync issues?

Do a trace route at the time to the destination you're after to see where packets are starting to disapear upstream?

Sounds less like a router if you've tried a different one. Sounds more like something above.

TwoSeven

1401 posts

Uber Geek

# 1029713 23-Apr-2014 11:50

Generally to isolate hardware I would plug my modem directly into a computer for a while and see if the problem goes away.

Software Engineer

timmmay

15556 posts

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# 1029730 23-Apr-2014 12:34

You need to remove everything possible from the equation - the switch, any unnecessary modems or routers. Do something like

ping -t www.geekzone.co.nz > out.txt

That will output a ping every second or so, basically testing the connection. If ping works you'll want to go up the network stack and try wget or something.

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