Odd problem with network-using apps and 2.5.4.0

[blackflag100]

This was happening with 2.5.3.x debug versions but it seems to happen much faster with 2.5.4.0.

After Shareaza has been running for a while, the performance of all other network-using apps will start to degrade. Once it begins, deterioration is rapid. Formerly it took from 18 to 48 hours of continuous operation of Shareaza for symptoms to occur and a few more to render other network apps unusable; with 2.5.4.0 it takes less than 6 hours for symptoms to occur and under 2 for the web browser at least to become very awkward to use.

Symptoms include:

Browser very slow to load pages. Will show progress 85-95% of the way across, then stop for a while, taking up to several full minutes to get the last few %. Oddly, incremental display of pages doesn't work when this strikes; it won't display the page to halfway down, or with a few images not yet loaded, or anything like that, instead continuing to display the previous page until the new one is 100% loaded. That is, the progress meter shows it fetching a new page but the display does not follow along and blank as soon as it begins to retrieve the new page, then display more and more of the new page, etc., but instead waits until the new page is completely loaded and then suddenly "catches up".

As it gets worse, images embedded in pages will randomly fail to load at all.

Once it gets severe, browser begins to screw up formatting the pages it does load. Pages will be badly formatted, background colors changed, bold blue/purple lines around images that shouldn't have borders, abnormal fonts and font sizes, and disruptions to page layout. Videos (e.g. Youtube) will stutter and pause frequently. Random error messages, claiming the remote host sent an RST packet, start occurring.

Other apps mostly exhibit long delays and occasional timeouts, e.g. trying to fetch or send mail.

These symptoms seem to suggest something is increasing latency and especially increasing the time taken to handshake new connections.

The odd thing is that Shareaza itself remains in the proverbial eye of the storm, downloading and uploading merrily without any visible ill effects.

What Shareaza itself isn't doing that all the other apps are, of course, is DNS lookups, so I have to wonder if the very long handshake times in other applications are because DNS is being inhibited somehow.

Obviously, none of this should be happening.

It can be fixed but at a cost: the Internet connection has to be forced to disconnect and reconnect, e.g. by rebooting the router. The cost is my IP address changes, so all Shareaza downloads are interrupted, queue positions lost, etc. (especially annoying after just getting near the front of a lengthy ed2k queue).

This is not a problem with hardware or any other software on my system: it does not ever, ever occur unless I run Shareaza for several hours. Running everything else for days and heavily surfing the web, downloading video, etc. does not trigger it. Only running Shareaza triggers it.

I'd guess some interaction between Shareaza and the Windows Vista network stack; loss of connectivity may cause the OS to unload some components it reloads if connectivity resumes, and that may happen to undo the problem by rebooting one of the affected components. The one odd spot is that this doesn't quite explain the changed browser page-display behavior (no more incremental update of the display when a page is loading but not yet fully loaded), which shouldn't happen without changes specifically to the application.

I suppose we're just lucky this can be fixed short of rebooting the whole damn computer.

[old_death]

Well, the browser font changes I can explain to you: If a browser doesn't manage to load the full content of a web page, it displays what it already has, applying default fonts and formatting to the parts of the page whose formatting has not yet been downloaded. That's why the formatting of some pages and text gets screwed up.

Once this happens, how many neighbours do you see within the neighbours window? (Especially the blue ones (G2) )

[ailurophobe]

So closing Shareaza does not fix it? That suggests that it is either Windows network stack or the router that gets "stuck". My random guess would be on the router. Although a software firewall could do something like this in theory, but it would have to be very badly written... Do you have other machines behind the router? If yes, do they show the same effect? If not, can you switch the router to "DMZ host" mode or similar and check if that helps?

There are lots of Shareaza settings you can tone down to reduce the load on the router if that is the cause... Or you can change either the router or router firmware.

[cyko_01]

this sounds like typical P2P application behaviour. You would see the same results if you tried to load 200 webpages all at once. You have a limited amount of bandwidth available to you (just like everyone else), and P2P applications like shareaza use a lot of bandwidth when downloading heavily (which is why this does not occur right away when you open shareaza - you need to find sources to download from, and this can sometimes take a while). This can cause web page to not load properly (eg: not load images)or not load at all, as well as cause youtube videos to buffer slower - causing the pausing and stuttering you described. Page layouts not displaying properly, strange fonts/sizes, borders around images (image which are also links when clicked) can a be the result of external CSS style-sheets failing to download.

You have a few options, you can try to throttle your downloads ( Tools > shareaza settings > internet > downloads > total download bandwidth )or you can pause your downloads while you are browsing the web. If you have the "monitor" toolbar visible ( Window > Show monitor ) you can also use the red slider arrow to quickly adjust the amount of bandwidth that shareaza can use.

[blackflag100]

[blackflag100]

[ailurophobe]

Having upload set too high can cause this. There are problems with Shareaza bandwidth throttling so unless you have upload well below what should not be any problems, other applications start acting weird. I doubt this is your problem since you say the problem starts with a delay, but mentioning this because people usually forget how sensitive download access is to upload congestion.

Not sure how you could test this, but have you considered ISP throttling? That would naturally hit with a delay and clear when you reset the connection.

[blackflag100]

[ailurophobe]

Actually, ISP throttling would be sensitive to arbitrarily small changes in the application behaviour. These are heuristic systems so the better the application fits whatever the profile used to detect "connection misuse" faster the throttling starts.

But it could also be the router or the network stack. Do you have the option of loaning a router or a laptop and seeing if that would make a difference? Can you check if disconnecting and reconnecting to the network from Windows without doing a router reset is enough to fix it or is a router reset required?

[blackflag100]

[old_death]

That's not 100% sure. Just try our what ailurophobe asked you to, as this will get us some more certain information which might actually help fixing the problem, don't you think?

[ailurophobe]

[blackflag100]

[ailurophobe]

Does using another browser change anything? A change in observed effects might help narrow it down.

Firefox uses multiple simultaneous connections to download content. ISP throttling only RST a random part of the connections resulting in random but invariably incorrect effects. Specifically since some of the connections do succeed the attempt to connect to the server does not fail or timeout, Firefox knows it is there and responding. In fact, the main reason I am assuming it is related to connections failing is because there are very few other problems that can make a web browser "act random". I saw similar effects when Microsoft introduced the ever so brilliant half-open connection limit.

I am not telling you to go buy a new router. Borrowing one for few hours from a friend would be enough to tell if it is router related for certain. And if it is, or you can't find a router to borrow, it is often possible to update the router firmware for free.

[blackflag100]

[ailurophobe]

There is no rule of logic that dictates that an update that fixed one problem would also have fixed another one. For that matter, problems with firmware updates are common enough that a hypothetical router problem would be more likely to have been caused by the past update than by a bug or hardware problem... But if you feel the router is unlikely to be connected, I have no reason to argue with that. Just one of the things I would check if I had a similar problem.

[brov]

I've had similar issue to yours recently. I was using other p2p software. In my case the root of the problem was... router! Tried other and... poof, problem gone. So I've done some tests on it. The router could not cope with stress caused by so many incoming and outgoing connections made in short time, so I limited max connections and some other things regarding tcp (like connection throttle) and that router actually works. And yes, download speed degraded at start only, if left alone for a few, it goes up to normal and I can browse the net while dl-ing .

[blackflag100]

[raspopov]

Shareaza has nothing with Firefox (no plug-ins, no registry issues, no common files etc.) and we provide no support for any program product except Shareaza. Get help on Firefox support forum please.

[cyko_01]