Adam Bower wrote:
Well, changing too much at once in the situation you're in probably won't help as when it breaks again you'll get different problems/symptoms. This is why I suggested using tcpdump as it gives your a proper record of what happened with various settings. Of course as you don't have root on the webserver it probably won't be too much help.
I'm looking at the feasibility of this; I just need to set something up somewhere that does work that I can give myself access to from home/work. Normally of-course I'd just do something between home and work but that means working with two known-bad connections.
PS: Any good TCP/IP book recommendations?
Discussed this on irc just yesterday, best book i've ever read on the subject has to be "TCP/IP Illustrated: The Protocols v. 1" by W.Richard Stevens ISBN 0201633469,
Thanks, will look this up.
Had "TCP/IP Analysis and Toubleshooting Toolkit" (Kevin Burns, 0-471-42975-9) recommended to me elsewhere, which I just happened to find on eBay and has already been delivered, so that gives me something to get started with.
In the meantime:
Having reduced MTU to 1458 the connection is noticably better but still noticably bad. From what I'm starting to understand, I'm not doing much to control the size of my received packets (even with MRU set to the same as MTU) so I wonder whether that's an issue. Actually knowing what data was getting through would of-course help. I'm finding comments about "MSS clamping" which sound relevant but which currently mean nothing to me. For example: http://www.solwiseforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1902&page=2
Assuming I get two test PCs, one at a known good location, to which I have root access, what do I need to do to install tcpdump and set up a useful test? Are there any LiveCD's I could use? (It would make it easier to use someone-else's hardware temporarily.)