461525 - Firefox "simulates" Internet disconnection when browsing the web

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 454381

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Andreas Eibach]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

This is a 3.1-beta only issue. I'm now back on 3.0, because this issue is unbearable, and yes, it *is* Firefox. Been browsing the net for about half an hour now with the 3.0 version, and the problem did not appear again.

I'm on DSL, dialing in solo via modem on a LAN - no router therefore.


Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
This is hard to do a step-by-step reproduction.

Simply, if you browse the net, focusing on pages complex in layout e. g. social networking sites like MySpace, or Slashdot, whatever ... this problem will occur.
Actual Results:  
After a little while, you can see a popping up requester window which normally appears if the Internet connection was interrupted.
However, since I've also used Internet Explorer (yuck), downloading a very big file at the same time to keep her busy, I could clearly test whether the "old" (active) connection was resumed meanwhile or whether it has always been there.

As you might guess, it *has* always been there, and was never interrupted; yet Firefox showed this requester window, displaying my ISP name on the first field, the password on the second, waiting for me to "redial".
However, when pressing the "dial" button, nothing happens except that the extra window flashes shortly, but it is still there.

"Cancel"-ing the window works for a short while, until it pops up again, which can be in 1 minute, or 10 minutes ... whenever FF decides to claim the Internet connection to be "broken up" again. (which it never is/was)

Does not happen with 3.0.


Expected Results:  
This requester window should only appear if the internet connection is indeed interrupted, not when it is still running.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Please read http://www.soswd.com/writing_bugs.html, specifically for all bugs and internet connection. Most important is trying in a new profile.

Comment 2

[Andreas Eibach]

Well ok, however, none the wiser.

"If you are having issues connecting to the Internet, it is most likely not an issue with Firefox, but an incorrectly set up Firewall."

OK I can confirm that external (!) firewall was off during ALL the tests to not trigger any side-effects. External yes, because: no XP = no internal firewall.

And yes, profile had previously been moved from annoying Micro$oft-ish C: drive default location (grr) to my other partition, but this actually should not do any harm at all.
At any rate, there must have been very essential changes since 3.0 if a new profile "fixes" the issue. I'm back to 3.0 now, as stated before, with exactly the same profile as used with 3.1b. Hence I do not assume that my profile is actually corrupt.

Comment 3

[Alistair Vining]

I also started seeing this (on dial-up) fairly frequently after updating to 3.1b2pre yesterday from 3.0 where it never occurred; new profile, safe mode, disabling tracing make no difference.  See as well the most recent comment in bug 169841 (against Core -> Networking).

Hard to reproduce, but the two most suspicious circumstances were: visiting http://www.guardian.co.uk/ and opening about 10 links in new tabs at once, and visiting http://www.cnn.com/ in one tab and http://planet.gnome.org/ in another.  Both of these lead to a couple of dozen connections to various sites being open at the same time, some of which probably fail.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024 Minefield/3.1b2pre

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Alistair: you are on dial-up, while the reporter is on DSL, so there could be something different. It is probably not, but we will have to get someone with DSL to confirm this, unless someone like matti thinks other wise.

Comment 5

[Andreas Eibach]

Thanks Alistair! At least I am not alone with this.
I will also check the other bug report you mentioned. Thanks ...

Comment 6

[Derek]

I'm also on dial-up and firefox always thinks im disconnected (not dialed up) and keeps popping up the dial dialog, and it happens to me on all web pages not just the ones mentioned above,

i notice the only work around is to set network.autodial-helper.enabled to false. In 3.0 this worked fine without disabling it, With it disabled Firefox wont ask to connect when your not really connected and with it enabled it just keeps asking to connect, 

Funny thing is if u click connect fast enough Firefox will load a little bit of data each time before asking again only about a split second worth of data though you can actually get the page to load if you want to sit there for several minutes rapidly clicking dial on the dialog every time Firefox pops it up,

This bug has a cpl cons, the first con is if you have network.autodial-helper.enabled disabled then Firefox won't ask you to connect if you got disconnected while browsing and it also won't bring up the dial dialog when you launch Firefox if your not already online making several extra steps to get online, For instance clicking start - connect to menu - then your internet connection - then dial on the dialog, or minimize all windows locate icon on desktop double click your dial-up icon then click dial, either way it is a lot slower then launching Firefox then just clicking dial.

Sure hope this gets fixed and i hope this gives you more information on the issue.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024 Minefield/3.1b2pre ID:20081024032143

Comment 7

[Andreas Eibach]

>Funny thing is if u click connect fast enough Firefox will load a little bit of
>data each time before asking again only about a split second worth of data
>though you can actually get the page to load if you want to sit there for
>several minutes rapidly clicking dial on the dialog every time Firefox pops it
>up

Fully confirmed - same here.

>This bug has a cpl cons, the first con is if you have
>network.autodial-helper.enabled disabled then Firefox won't ask you to connect
>if you got disconnected while browsing

Yes! That is a real problem, because I do want this on! However, it should only come into effect *when* my ISP disconnects me or when I disconnect manually - at least not permanently as it is now.

I believe the reason for the bug is that there must be a mistake in the networking core about Internet connection *detection*, i. e. the connection is detected as "lost" even though it is still stable and active.