Re: Differences with Netscape or MSIE

Dombrofsky Klaus-Peter wrote:

> Are there known problems using MSIE 4/5 or using Netscape

There are known problems in both brands. The ones in IE is a bit harder
to get around thought. In both browsers most of the problems are related
to persistent connections.

Netscape:
n1) Security proxy (https/snews) must be different than the other
proxies, or most versions will send a unencrypted https request to the
proxy if there is a idle proxy connection already opened by the browser
previously used for http. It does not actually need to be a different
proxy, but the setting must be stringwise different than the other
proxies (using upper case and the other in lower case is sufficient).
(you can see this in the access logs. If there is https: requests then
people are bitten by this bug)

MS IE:
e1) There seems to be problems with redirects when Squid is used in a
hierarchy. This has been reported for sites like hotmail and other major
sites.
e2) IE5 hangs on certain uncachable replies when received thru Squid.
IE4 on the same pages seems to return blank pages.

Both?
u1) Sometimes the browser opens a new proxy connection but defers to use
it until later, causing Squid to return "Connection Lifetime Expired"
when the connection has been idle longer than request_timeout.

Two relevant patches from my Squid page
<http://hem.passagen.se/hno/squid/>:
* Squid-2.2.STABLE5: pconn_timeout on client connections / disabling
 
<http://hem.passagen.se/hno/squid/squid-2.2.STABLE5.pconn_settings.patch>
  (allows a work-around to the n1, e1 and u1 problems by disabling
persistent connections)

* Squid-2.2.STABLE5: Corrections to age calculation
  <http://hem.passagen.se/hno/squid/squid-2.2.STABLE5.age.patch
  (works around the e2 problem)

Squid.conf settings:

request_timeout 5 minutes
pconn_timeout 0

The age patch is included in 2.3.STABLE1. The pconn_timeout patch is
available in a Squid-2.3 version from my Squid page.

--
Henrik Nordstrom
Squid hacker