General Chat

If my car breaks down, I don't expect the mechanic or his 'monkey' to explain what he's doing.
In other words, I don't need to know about the mechanics, what I 'should' or 'should not' be buying in order for the mechanic to fix the car - that's his job.
I have different talents.
I won't stand there and explain how to make curtains, just because I can.

I've paid for a service, I expect that service to be delivered.

GR, in supplying a link to their customer service, obviously know about the situation, so one presumes it's their job to fix it.

There is no such thing as a "connection" on a routed packet based system such as the internet. That is the whole point of it. Back in DARPA days if a node become unavailable then the packet would simply be re-routed. The current massive concentration of internet nodes in a handful of centres is a really bad idea and goes against the original design grain of the net.

All soho internet services are based on a contention ratio which will change from moment to moment. A user uploading video could easily slow up the connection for everybody on the network segment for instance. Result varies from slowdown to failure. Typical contention ratio is 10:1 down. Up varies and can be really bad for those using DOCSIS 3.0 such as Virgin.

For serious stuff it is possible to get a "leased line" but v expensive and overkill for soho users.

The vast majority of small web sites have very little control at all of how data is routed from their web server to the user. They are able to "tune" the web server to some degree to take account of web traffic conditions.

The classic web server is called Apache and is rugged and well able to stand up and deliver no matter what.

For reasons to do with their parent company's main business GR do not use Apache but Microsoft IIS. IIS is really targetted at internal intranets where traffic can be rightly controlled. It is unsuitable for the public internet. One of the leading problems with it is that in order to avoid being hacked ( IIS is not very resilient) the response time for validating logins is very short. If the user's machine takes too long to log in then the dreaded connection error will arise. GR tech support can extend the wait time but only at the risk of lower security.

I use a mixture of leased line (at work), Vivid300 and 4G to connect to GR and have not had any kind of access error or tree unavailable in the last two years. Neither have I had any problem from outside of the UK.

YMMV.

...well, last night was the first time for me :-D

I am coming to the conclusion that I must be very lucky as I have no problems getting on and can't remember the last time I had an error message on any page. Hope I haven't spoken too soon - I've probably jinxed it now ;-)

I know very little about how this technology works so I don't know whether my lack of problems is anything to do with the fact that I always sign in and out and cookies/history etc. are cleared regularly. There are four or five genealogy sites and a couple of other sites that I use all the time. As I am signing in to these sites so regularly I can remember the passwords so it only takes seconds to do and I feel more comfortable logging out completely when I leave them.

Here's hoping I don't start getting the error message and you all stop getting them

It took 3 attempts for me, as well :-|

To give them their due, on my 'error' page, it does say to contact them,and has a link.

I presume that means they admit the problem's at their end - and we haven't all got cr*p connections!

I couldn't get on here at all last night ................ ca 3 am UK time.

I tried for about 10 minutes .......... errors at each stage from getting on GR, then trying My Threads, or General Chat because My Threads didn't wokr.

First time it has been SO bad for me.

Just had a Message from Support saying the problem has now been resolved and should work correctly :-)

I had great difficulty getting on to GR this morning.....error message after error message after error message :-| :-|

Even the first message I sent to ' Contact Support' when to error message :-| :-|

Not a happy bunny :-| :-|

ISP DNS service is often as slow as treacle which can cause problems. Here is a free fix.

https://www.howtogeek.com/164981/how-to-switch-to-opendns-or-google-dns-to-speed-up-web-browsing/

You are looking in the wrong place.
genesreunited.co.uk web traffic is carried by cogentco.com.
The performance of your connection will depend on what kind of peering your isp has with cogentco.com and other major networks.
You can try opening a command shell and pinging
213.128.240.86
If the ping time is around 40ms or better you should be ok but if it is much slower or times out all together then yr problem is with yr ISP.GR/Scotland not being important none of them will lift a finger though if the connection to a top site was playing up ( affecting ad revenues) then action would be swift.

It is not unknown for large networks to get into fights over carrying each other's data. Users experience this as slow downs of varying intensity and even loss of access.This happens now with supposed "net nutrality". D Trump wishes to abandon net neutrality which would be the end for small and recondite sites.

GR themselves cannot do much about it. Their suggestion to flush the cache is a good one though inconvenient.

fwiw the "cookies" do not refer to file locations on yr computer. They just contain transient data. The folder which contains the cookies is normally hidden under Windows but you can unhide it if you wish to and read the cookies or at least the parts which are not encrypted. Extremely boring.

Enjoy

You can always go down the pub or pick up your knitting. I spent a nice day at the Oval but will I suppose have to do some work tomorrow however pointless.

DET ....................

same here!!!!

If you search 'how to delete cookies' you should find the answer for your operating system.


Sylvia - OH did that a few weeks ago. It meant I had to look up all the passwords which had been set to 'remember' :-|

sounds like the usual gobbledy-gook ......


as Kath says, we all have different computers/browsers rtc etc etc



As for the cookies ...... they want you to get rid of the cookies THEY have left on your computer .............

try clearing your history as a start.


Be aware that if you clear all your cookies, you will then have to sign in on ALL your sites!

good explanation if I could find where GRs cookies are Det :-D

No idea where the cookies can be found on a computer but this is my take to their explanation.

Let’s assume GR is your local library. You normally head from the door to the ‘Romance’ section. From the door to that stack is a cookie.

The head Librarian decides to move Romance elsewhere in the building.
You follow your pre-existing path along the cookie 1 only to find your choice of reading isn’t there.
You create path/cookie 2 to go to the new location.
On the next visit you’ve forgotten the books have been moved. You follow path/cookie 1 then on to path/cookie 2.

What GR/the Librarian suggests is to forget all about cookie 1 & 2 (delete them) and follow the shorter path/cookie from the door to the new location. No more dithering/error messages while wondering where they’ve put all the Mills&Boons :-D

I've no idea Ann but we can't all have issues with our computer/browser/cookie settings.

The error messages are all down to Genes whether they want to admit it or not - it always turns out to be their end.

The site is running very slowly (and we have 200 mb connection) and I am getting error messages all the time.

GR needs to sort it out and not let it go on for months like it has in the past.

Kath. x

This might explain it. Email received fromGR

Thank you for your e mail.

Clearing your cache should stop this message if not try using another browser.

The message is there as we changed all the pages on the site to be HTTPS (secure) so clearing the cache will prevent you from being sent to an older version of the site.

We use cookies on the site so you can always check if you have this setting too high.

If you need any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us again.


What setting are they talking about re cookies?

I don't think so, Kense, this has been happening for the last few days before the FMP offer

Perhaps it is the free FMP weekend that is overloading the Thomson servers.

Dorothy, I'm also in Australia (Western) and although I haven't tried accessing my tree as I have it on two other commercial sites, this site has been running very slowly recently as well as showing the error message when I try to post replies on some threads.

Combined with us having recently connected to the NBN which, where I live, is very unstable and drops out for varying periods every few days, I feel like hurling my computer through the window! :-|