Strange website problem - The connection has timed out

edited April 2011 in Site Support
I'm writing this from another computer, because the TTG website has yet again stopped working from my main desktop.

Basically, it all works fine for a while. Then pages gradually take longer and longer to load, and eventually just start failing altogether with "The connection has timed out" messages.

The rest of the internet works fine for me. Other computers in my house still display the website fine. I can PING telltalegames.com and get a response ... but the website just stops responding.

If I restart my computer, it's all fine again ... for a while. But I really shouldn't have to restart my computer just for a website to work!

I've also tried ipconfig /flushdns but it doesn't change anything.

It's a really weird error, I know. At this stage I'm suspecting some bizarre kind of DNS corruption issue, but I've really never encountered anything like this before. I don't know if it affects just me or anyone else.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. It made me miss the 303 release by about half an hour, after I'd been waiting all day, just thought the website had gone down temporarily but gradually came to realise it was something wrong at my end...

Comments

  • edited June 2010
    serializer wrote: »
    I'm writing this from another computer, because the TTG website has yet again stopped working from my main desktop.

    Basically, it all works fine for a while. Then pages gradually take longer and longer to load, and eventually just start failing altogether with "The connection has timed out" messages.

    The rest of the internet works fine for me. Other computers in my house still display the website fine. I can PING telltalegames.com and get a response ... but the website just stops responding.

    If I restart my computer, it's all fine again ... for a while. But I really shouldn't have to restart my computer just for a website to work!

    I've also tried ipconfig /flushdns but it doesn't change anything.

    It's a really weird error, I know. At this stage I'm suspecting some bizarre kind of DNS corruption issue, but I've really never encountered anything like this before. I don't know if it affects just me or anyone else.

    Any help or advice would be much appreciated. It made me miss the 303 release by about half an hour, after I'd been waiting all day, just thought the website had gone down temporarily but gradually came to realise it was something wrong at my end...

    Is the entire website affected, or just the main page/blog etc (i.e. are the forums affected? You might want to bookmark the forums to try in future)
  • edited June 2010
    Friar wrote: »
    Is the entire website affected, or just the main page/blog etc (i.e. are the forums affected? You might want to bookmark the forums to try in future)

    The entire website, I'm usually browsing the forums when I notice it; but I then also tried the main page and couldn't access that either. It also even prevented me unlocking 303 the other day.
  • edited June 2010
    serializer wrote: »
    The entire website, I'm usually browsing the forums when I notice it; but I then also tried the main page and couldn't access that either. It also even prevented me unlocking 303 the other day.
    I just recieved a database error. Hmm...

    Had you had problems with the website before the episode cam out? It could be something to do with the extra strain put on the site by all the downloads.
  • edited June 2010
    Friar wrote: »
    I just recieved a database error. Hmm...

    Yeah I just got that too, that was a different problem apparently affecting all computers and all locations.
    Friar wrote: »
    Had you had problems with the website before the episode cam out? It could be something to do with the extra strain put on the site by all the downloads.

    Like I say, other computers (even other ones in my house) are accessing the site fine when it happens. So I don't see how it can a website load-related problem!

    BUT, the exact minute that 303 came out, the problem got much worse. It had been running slowly up to this, then the whole website stopped working. After a while I went on the #telltale IRC and discovered that the episode had been released and that the website was working fine for everyone else. It was then that I tested from my other computers and found it was working on them too!

    Since then it keeps happening on and off.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited December 2010
    serializer wrote: »
    Basically, it all works fine for a while. Then pages gradually take longer and longer to load, and eventually just start failing altogether with "The connection has timed out" messages.

    The rest of the internet works fine for me. Other computers in my house still display the website fine. I can PING telltalegames.com and get a response ... but the website just stops responding.

    If I restart my computer, it's all fine again ... for a while. But I really shouldn't have to restart my computer just for a website to work!

    Wow, i have the exact same issue every now and then since maybe a month ago. I have not been able to find the reason either.

    I can say for sure that it's not a DNS issue. Here's a couple of other things i found out while trying to debug it. Btw. it's Windows 7 64 bit.

    - Rebooting my computer fixes it for me too
    - Restarting my Fritzbox or just getting a new IP doesn't help
    - Traceroute and Ping work as expected.
    - Flushing DNS doesn't do the trick
    - Just restarting the network service or network device doesn't fix it
    - A Windows or Ubuntu running in VMWare player on the same PC doesn't fix it
    - I can always successfully work around it using a Proxy or VPN
    - It fixes itself after a while, without me having to reboot
    - I logged the packages on my Fritzbox. I can see that they get sent to TTGs server, but even the Fritzbox doesn't get a response. That's what puzzled me entirely, because it doesn't fit with a reboot of the PC fixing it.

    That's were i stopped debugging, because i couldn't find any sane explanation anymore. I sadly don't have another Client i can connect to the Fritzbox to see if it works with it while my PC fails.

    The issue is pretty rare nowadays. Maybe once a week, while it was a few times daily some weeks ago.
    For now i work around using a proxy if i really want to do something here and don't want to reboot my PC. Usually rebooting would disrupt my multitasking workflow and is not an option while doing other work.

    I would be interested to hear from others who have the same issue though,
    especially if they have Windows 7 64 bit or a Fritzbox too.
  • edited March 2011
    At certain times, the website goes down for nightly maitnence.
  • edited April 2011
    Hey I thought it was just me! I get this problem regularly. I'll be reading the forums and then I click a thread and it says loading for several minutes, then times out. Refreshing doesn't help. Sometimes if I can get it to go to the main page of the site it says 'oh crumbs!'. If I wait about half an hour I can usually get the pages to work again. It used to happen after about half an hour or more on the forums, now sometimes it's after a few minutes. I've tried using explorer instead of Firefox and it doesn't make a difference.
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