Bug#541658: problem not only in the network

[Daniel Gibson]

sasha mal schrieb:
> Daniel,
> 
> it's great that you are dealing with that.
> 
> I've just now tried  lynx, firefox, safari on Mac OS X 10.5.8 from the same network. With the result that
> - lynx 2.8.6rel.5 opens both research.microsoft.com and research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/thoare even when all cookies are accepted, and many more pages from the domain (but, trivially, refuses to open aspx pages),
> - firefox 3.6.4 refuses to open any pages under research.microsoft.com
> - safari Version 5.0 (5533.16) refuses to open any pages under research.microsoft.com
> 
> In my roles as an internet user I don't understand the technical stuff.
> But I do see that the most popular browser (IE) displays the page. And I do see that it is technically possible for the open browsers like lynx.
> 
> So, given that Microsoft's IE on Windows is the most popular browser, whether we want it or not, Microsoft defined the standard. Not the HTTP or other specifications. Thus:
> firefox is defective.
> 
> Currently, this nonconformant behaviour prevents me from using firefox and makes me use lynx or IE. Not only me. All research folks too. As long as MS doesn't care about how we want them to behave, we have to stick to their standards.
> 
> Thus: reopening the bug.
> 
> Sasha.
> 

Microsoft does not define the standard and just because their page is 
broken firefox/iceweasel, opera, safari, google chrome, ... don't have 
to work around it.
Even Microsoft themselves seems to have accepted that - since IE7 they 
produce fairly standard conform browser (compared to the mess of IE6 and 
before).

I tried IE6 on Windows 2000 in VirtualBox and the page didn't load.

However: Are we really having the same problem? Does deleting Microsofts 
cookie fix it for you? (Edit->Preferences->Privacy->remove individual 
cookies ; then search for microsoft and delete all listed cookies)

I also noticed that my mtu-clamping was correct (or should have been at 
least, if there is no strange bug in the kernel/iptables) before I 
changed it, but the page didn't load anyway. Also, without any 
mtu-clamping the page does load.. all this is really strange.

# old line (page doesn't load)
iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS 
--clamp-mss-to-pmtu
# new line (page does load)
iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -m tcpmss --mss 
1400:1536 -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

This probably would need deeper investigation (also in the kernel and 
iptables), but I don't really know where and how to start.

Cheers,
- Daniel