[UCIMC-Tech] Re: Gmail problems

Tue May 6 14:37:48 CDT 2008

On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 02:10:48PM -0500, Barry Isralewitz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 01:41:37PM -0500, Bob Illyes wrote:
> > Joy uses gmail without problem, but gmail doesn't work from the Print Mac, 
> > which has an old OS and browser for arcane reasons. Gmail seems to be picky 
> > about browsers, and the issue in the Bike Projet may be an old browser 
> > rather than the UCIMC web service. Print doesn't have any problem with 
> > Google itself, though, last time I checked.
>  
>  Thanks for the info.
> 
>  To clarify problem I see in Bike Project computer: the trouble seems to be
> with establishing any communication at all with with google.com and/or
> gmail.com; so this seems more of a routing/adressing issue than a browser-
> compaitiblity issue.  (To be positive, I'll try pings from/to different places
> when I'm next in the shop.) The Firefox browser version on Bike Project's BSD
> computer is modern enough; it renders gmail and google pages quickly and
> accurately during some periods (i.e.  when communication apparently going
> well.) Also, the http://google.com default page is very simple, about any
> browser around can render it at least somewhat well.
> 
>  Hmm... I'm recalling now I had the same problem last week -- periods when
> could not contact google.com but could contact all other distant websites -- on
> my laptop when connected to OpenIMC in the room 24. (Have latest, stable
> browser versions on my laptop.)
> 
>  Demonstrate problem with Firefox:
>      a) enter 'google.com' into address bar, get animated 'busy' icon 
>      b) while a) continues, open a new tab.  enter yahoo.com.  page is quickly displayed.
>      c) close tab from a) (it is still 'busy'.
>      d) open new tab.  try google.com again.  Another 'busy' icon
>      e) enter "newyorktimes.com". Page is quickly displayed.  The google pages continue to display 'busy' icons. In some cases, the google pges will appear a few minutes later, sometimes not. 

It'd be interesting to open a terminal window (xterm or whatever)
while this is going on, and type

    netstat -tf inet

and note the output.  There'll be a line for every active TCP connection.
Do you see a line like

    tcp4       0    224  192.168.11.11.55390    <something>.google.com.http      SYN_SENT

?  The "SYN_SENT" would be the important thing -- it'd mean that 
packets were being sent to google but no acknowledgement was reaching you.
This would be a way of showing that it's a network-level problem,
not e.g. a name resolution problem.

It would also be interesting to "traceroute" to google.com at a troublesome time,
and see how far it gets.  Here's what I get from zeco to google.com now (2:40pm Tue):

[slevy at zeco ~]$ traceroute www.google.com
traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 64.233.169.99
traceroute to www.l.google.com (64.233.169.99), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.11.1 (192.168.11.1)  0.366 ms  0.519 ms  0.463 ms
 2  * * *
 3  ge-1-2-ur01.champaign.il.chicago.comcast.net (68.85.178.65)  13.067 ms  14.257 ms  18.691 ms
 4  pos-0-10-0-0-ar01.indianapolis.in.indiana.comcast.net (68.86.90.174)  15.016 ms  20.180 ms  21.873 ms
 5  pos-0-0-0-0-cr01.nashville.tn.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.173)  28.347 ms  25.456 ms  32.600 ms
 6  pos-0-5-0-0-cr01.atlanta.ga.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.66)  32.474 ms  39.619 ms  31.696 ms
 7  te-9-1.car1.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.71.252.29)  38.348 ms  233.805 ms  202.324 ms
 8  ae-21-52.car1.Atlanta1.Level3.net (4.68.103.34)  32.476 ms  34.408 ms  34.820 ms
 9  GOOGLE-INC.car1.Atlanta1.Level3.net (4.78.209.194)  35.161 ms  39.392 ms  42.619 ms
10  209.85.254.188 (209.85.254.188)  59.483 ms  45.657 ms  65.054 ms
11  72.14.238.137 (72.14.238.137)  51.222 ms
    72.14.238.139 (72.14.238.139)  54.197 ms
    72.14.238.137 (72.14.238.137)  52.119 ms
12  64.233.175.169 (64.233.175.169)  59.934 ms
    64.233.175.109 (64.233.175.109)  46.281 ms
    64.233.175.111 (64.233.175.111)  47.436 ms
13  216.239.49.149 (216.239.49.149)  50.079 ms
    216.239.49.145 (216.239.49.145)  51.710 ms  50.709 ms
14  yo-in-f99.google.com (64.233.169.99)  48.751 ms  52.487 ms  52.077 ms

>          Cheers,
> 
>          Barry
> 
> -- 
> Barry Isralewitz   Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, UIUC  
> Beckman 3043   Office Phone: (217) 244-1612  Home Phone: (217) 337-6364
> email: barryi at ks.uiuc.edu      http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~barryi
> _______________________________________________
> IMC-Tech mailing list
> IMC-Tech at lists.ucimc.org
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc-tech