[vox] A hypothetical question about the Web's dark underbelly

[Richard Crawford]

Our website normally works like this: you browse to it, wind up in a
frameset, and everything you do is in that frameset.  In fact, if you go
to our login page directly, it pops up a JavaScript saying "We will now
load the content in a frameset", and then redirects to the frameset.  If
you go to our front page and click on "Login", though, that issue doesn't
come up.

Now, we have a user in San Jose who is experiencing serious problems with
our website.  He gets to the front page fine, then clicks on "Login", and
then all of a sudden gets the pop-up box and the page refuses to load. 
Now, we did have a problem with our site last week, but that issue has
been fixed.  But he's still getting the problem.  I've gone through our
code with a fine-toothed comb, restarted our servers, cleared out our
various caches, and double-checked with several people throughout the
state... and no one else is getting this problem.

I had the user do a "tracert" from the Windows command prompt, and he told
me that there were a few hops toward the end where the connection timed
out.  Is it possible that one of his ISP's routers, or another router
somewhere else along the way, has the bad page stored and is serving that
to him instead of the proper page?

By the way, if anyone wants to try to reproduce the error themselves, go
to http://unexdlc.ucdavis.edu and click on the "Login" link.  If you get
the popup about the framesets, please let me know (a popup about technical
support being available on Monday is proper).


Sláinte,
Richard S. Crawford (AIM: Buffalo2K)

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