The workaround should work. I would make the keepalive timeout 302 seconds or something just incase you get an overlap.
In theory yes they should be the same but the behavior is strange so it is unclear what it is.
The site traffic is so modest I don't think you will notice the difference of either.
I would increase the keepalive time rather than disabling. You are unlikely to hit any tcp limits or have much more overhead from these dormant connections. I think this is better than constantly recreating new connections every second.
As for testing this for comprehensive performance results I'll have to have think about what would be best.
One thing to keep in mind... if you have a load-balancer in between your server and your clients, you'll need to ensure that the balancer has a "sticky" connection timeout of 5 minutes as well. If the load-balancer swaps between two active servers within
the 5-minute timeout of FF, then you'll see the same issue.
Yeah, Load balancers can add another level of complexity to the http keepalive timeouts. They will need to be sticky. To be safe you can increase this.
I agree with that too. The "fix" is just a bandaid fix, and should be temporary. It needs to be fixed on the Microsoft or Firefox side it at all possible.
The only real issue is on the MS-side. The FireFox default setting just compounds the problem... but there would be no issue if the server sent the proper connection closing response.
Do you have a netmon trace exhibiting the problem? I should be able to get tcpip experts here to take a look. I can see that IIS (actually http.sys) is sending FIN when the server side timeout is hit. Why do the firefox folks think that is not sufficient?
Anil Ruia
Software Design Engineer
IIS Core Server
I'm having a similar problem and I've tried changing the connection-timeout in IIS to 300 seconds but it's not working for me? We are running Win 2008 Server 32bit with IIS 7. We are a Mac house and use FireFox and Safari on most our machines. Here is our
current setup:
- We have a secure access intranet website that can be access from inside and outside of the office using a domain name. We are using AD and Windows Authentication to verify access.
- On the intranet website we have online training & HR forms that people fill-in on a regular bases and submit to the HR department.
We recently noticed that people who are submitting these forms from outside of the office are having timeout issues when using FireFox 3.x. The timeout period seems to be about 2 minutes. If the form is completed and submited in < 2 minutes then all is well.
But if the form takes longer than 2 minutes to fill, the submission does nothing. FF just tries to submit the form then eventually displays a blank page or a connection problem message.
Is there anything else I can try to get around this issue until FF gets fixed? I appreciate any help you can provide.
Rovastar
3321 Posts
MVP
Moderator
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 12, 2009 01:14 PM|LINK
The workaround should work. I would make the keepalive timeout 302 seconds or something just incase you get an overlap.
In theory yes they should be the same but the behavior is strange so it is unclear what it is.
The site traffic is so modest I don't think you will notice the difference of either.
I would increase the keepalive time rather than disabling. You are unlikely to hit any tcp limits or have much more overhead from these dormant connections. I think this is better than constantly recreating new connections every second.
As for testing this for comprehensive performance results I'll have to have think about what would be best.
(Edit: too slow at typing)
Rovastar
3321 Posts
MVP
Moderator
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 12, 2009 01:19 PM|LINK
Yeah, Load balancers can add another level of complexity to the http keepalive timeouts. They will need to be sticky. To be safe you can increase this.
pbreitz
8 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 19, 2009 08:02 PM|LINK
Just following up for posterity. Looks like increasing timeout to 300s was a success. We haven't been able to reproduce the problem since.
VorlonShadow
79 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 19, 2009 08:09 PM|LINK
I concur. Since I've increased my time out, I have not experienced the delay problems.
Rovastar
3321 Posts
MVP
Moderator
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 20, 2009 11:07 AM|LINK
Nice to know that is working. However it doesn't actually solve the problem. Is the case closed now with microsoft?
VorlonShadow
79 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 20, 2009 01:05 PM|LINK
I agree with that too. The "fix" is just a bandaid fix, and should be temporary. It needs to be fixed on the Microsoft or Firefox side it at all possible.
Jesse
ianderson
22 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 20, 2009 01:12 PM|LINK
The only real issue is on the MS-side. The FireFox default setting just compounds the problem... but there would be no issue if the server sent the proper connection closing response.
anilr
2343 Posts
Microsoft
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
May 20, 2009 04:17 PM|LINK
Do you have a netmon trace exhibiting the problem? I should be able to get tcpip experts here to take a look. I can see that IIS (actually http.sys) is sending FIN when the server side timeout is hit. Why do the firefox folks think that is not sufficient?
Software Design Engineer
IIS Core Server
maushana
2 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
Jun 13, 2009 02:12 PM|LINK
I'm having a similar problem and I've tried changing the connection-timeout in IIS to 300 seconds but it's not working for me? We are running Win 2008 Server 32bit with IIS 7. We are a Mac house and use FireFox and Safari on most our machines. Here is our current setup:
- We have a secure access intranet website that can be access from inside and outside of the office using a domain name. We are using AD and Windows Authentication to verify access.
- On the intranet website we have online training & HR forms that people fill-in on a regular bases and submit to the HR department.
We recently noticed that people who are submitting these forms from outside of the office are having timeout issues when using FireFox 3.x. The timeout period seems to be about 2 minutes. If the form is completed and submited in < 2 minutes then all is well. But if the form takes longer than 2 minutes to fill, the submission does nothing. FF just tries to submit the form then eventually displays a blank page or a connection problem message.
Is there anything else I can try to get around this issue until FF gets fixed? I appreciate any help you can provide.
Thank you,
Mike
maushana
2 Posts
Re: Pages appear to stop responding
Jun 22, 2009 01:30 PM|LINK
Can any one help? Has this been resolved yet?