sometimes I get "The page cannot be displayed" - totally random

[David Thielen]

Hi;

We have our app up on a beta server. Sometimes people from outside the
firewall get "The page cannot be displayed" when they try to access it. A
couple of weird things about this:

1) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, that always works.

2) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, then the person outside can
access it. It's as though an inside connection is needed to wake it up.

3) My logging shows Global.asax Application_Start getting called about once
an hour for the last 3 hours. So it looks as though the entire application is
getting stopped and then restarted.

Any ideas?

--
thanks - dave
david_at_windward_dot_net
http://www.windwardreports.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm

[Mark Rae]

"David Thielen" <th*****@nospam.nospamwrote in message
news:D3**********************************@microsof t.com...

We have our app up on a beta server. Sometimes people from outside the
firewall get "The page cannot be displayed" when they try to access it. A
couple of weird things about this:

1) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, that always works.

2) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, then the person outside can
access it. It's as though an inside connection is needed to wake it up.

3) My logging shows Global.asax Application_Start getting called about
once
an hour for the last 3 hours. So it looks as though the entire application
is
getting stopped and then restarted.

Any ideas?

Application_Start will fire when a Session starts and no other Sessions are
current, same as Application_End will fire when the very last Session is
torn down.

Could it be that there is something in Application_Start which would cause
an error if the Session which caused it to fire was from a user outside the
firewall, but works perfectly from inside the firewall...?

Do you not have any exception handling in your Application_Start method
which would indicate what the problem is...?

[David Thielen]

Yes I log exceptions in the Application and Session handlers - no exceptions.
In fact I log everything (I believe) and nothing. It's as if it is never
getting to my code.

And outside works sometimes, just not all the time.

--
thanks - dave
david_at_windward_dot_net
http://www.windwardreports.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm


"Mark Rae" wrote:

"David Thielen" <th*****@nospam.nospamwrote in message
news:D3**********************************@microsof t.com...

We have our app up on a beta server. Sometimes people from outside the
firewall get "The page cannot be displayed" when they try to access it. A
couple of weird things about this:

1) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, that always works.

2) If someone inside the firewall accesses it, then the person outside can
access it. It's as though an inside connection is needed to wake it up.

3) My logging shows Global.asax Application_Start getting called about
once
an hour for the last 3 hours. So it looks as though the entire application
is
getting stopped and then restarted.

Any ideas?

Application_Start will fire when a Session starts and no other Sessions are
current, same as Application_End will fire when the very last Session is
torn down.

Could it be that there is something in Application_Start which would cause
an error if the Session which caused it to fire was from a user outside the
firewall, but works perfectly from inside the firewall...?

Do you not have any exception handling in your Application_Start method
which would indicate what the problem is...?

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Dave,

Do you mean the application some times will not be able to started up by
some requests coming from external web, but can be visited by internal
users, correct?

When the external user fails to access the web application, if the error
message is only "page can not be displayed" you can check the IIS log to
see whether the request entry did arrive IIS, and at that time did the
ASP.NET application started correctly(as you can do some logging in
application_Start event). In addition, is there any security specific
control or protection in your web application that will affect external web
users?

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[David Thielen]

Hi;

We got it again. The IIS logs show no requests and our ASP.NET app log shows
no requests. A person from outside could not get to the site.

I hit the site from inside and now they can get to it fine. The only thing
seems to be if the ASP.NET app is running because it was requested from our
internal network.

But the weirdest part is that there is nothing even in the IIS logs. Its as
though the request is never even getting to IIS.

--
thanks - dave
david_at_windward_dot_net
http://www.windwardreports.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm


"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hello Dave,

Do you mean the application some times will not be able to started up by
some requests coming from external web, but can be visited by internal
users, correct?

When the external user fails to access the web application, if the error
message is only "page can not be displayed" you can check the IIS log to
see whether the request entry did arrive IIS, and at that time did the
ASP.NET application started correctly(as you can do some logging in
application_Start event). In addition, is there any security specific
control or protection in your web application that will affect external web
users?

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Dave,

Thanks for your followup.

Well, your further finding is what I have considered at the begining. It
seems the external client's request did not event reach the webserver,
there could be some network issue for external access on that webserver. Is
there any potential proxy issue between external clients and your ASP.NET
application's server?
Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.