Question

I have a strange timeout error, but I’m not sure how to debug it.

I have a client using Firefox 5.0 on XP, accessing a website I am developing, where the POST requests for a dynamic page timeout after about 30 seconds. As in, they work for about 30 seconds, and then stop… until the page is reloaded.

I suspect it’s something with the client’s firewall, but the site works fine when they use IE7 (although IE7 has other problems and isn’t a solution). When I run from a similar configuration in my development environment I can’t reproduce the timeout problem.

The backend is a django site running on Apache through mod_wsgi (but I don’t think that matters), and I use POST requests with jQuery to dynamically update a page, specifically:

$.ajax({
  url: '/app/portal',
  dataType: 'json',
  type: 'POST',
  data: {parameter: 'value'},
  success: function(json){
    //...
  },
  error: function(xhr, testStatus, error) {
    //...
  }
});

It was a fresh install of firefox (and had the problem before and after I installed the firebug plugin).

Is there anything I can check? Is there something I’m missing? Is it possible to determine if it’s a firewall issue or some other IT problem?

Further details:

1. There was no record in apache’s access log.
2. The communication was over SSL.
3. Non ajax calls (ie, links to other pages on the site) worked okay.

Clearing the cache also has no effect.

I am not sure about the client’s network configuration – could there be proxy or something else that would be causing such a timeout?

Answer 1

i would suggest installing Fiddler Web Debugger and watching exactly what goes out and what come in.