General Chat

Sylvia, I don't think 'local issues' means geographical location in this instance. More likely IT-Speak for your personal computer.
I am intrigued by your comment 'Island, Ann, Ken, etc are in England, VERY different pars of England at that" How would you know where I live and whether it is VERY different? :-S

Allan, I think you're on to something there.

"I am using Google chrome and have no issue with it." Hmmm.... to what extent I wonder? I bet she doesn't use the community boards, which is where I feel the problem lies.
I don't think 'they' want to admit there is an issue.

Bring back Phil Moir!

Island ..............

I don't know where you live

I know Ann lives in Gloucestershire from her Board Name

I know others who have complained (not necessarily on this thread) live in northern England, Scotland, Kent, etc etc

I assumed, possibly wrongly, that the 3 I named, that is you, Ann and Ken, do not live in the same neighbourhood!

GenesRU is a somewhat unusual site in that it uses Microsoft IIS as its public web server. Few sites do that - most use some version of Apache. IIS main purpose is driving corporate intranets full od documents, diaries and databases etc. Most of the users in such scenarios will not be accessing the internet via ISP cable and ADSL routers but will have a direct connection and usually no delays.

Getting IIS to support SOHO users is a bit of a pain 'cos the settings do not admit of much delay for reasons of security. Thus it does not take much and a SOHO user can find that their transaction has timed out. No doubt Bright Solid have "tuned" the servers as far as possible but IIS will never be Apache.

That a SOHO user can access other public web sites ok means nothing as they are way unlikely to be running IIS. Using other devices attached to the same router is likely to also throw the "error" message.

Try accessing GenesRU at another site with good bandwidth and quick repsonse eg most public libraries. Most likely the dreaded "error" will not occur.

The surest way of avoiding the problem is to have a good quick connection. WiFi tends to create this kind of timeout problem so try connecting to the router using ethernet cable if you have been using wifi. Most ISP routers now support 5Mhz connections as well as 2.8Mhz. If you can switch to 5Mhz do it is has far beter performance especially in houses with solid walls.

Test your connection
http://www.speedtest.net/
The ping should be < 20ms. If it is over 30ms then problems are possible. Download data speed will be between 10 and 50 Mbps for most people. Les than 10 and problems are possible.

I have got all sorts of ancient kit to run GenesRU smoothly with no error reports. All depended on a decent connection.

There is only one GenesRU server there are no servers in New Zealand, Australia etc.

Canada is an odd ball case. Although large in area it is only 35 M people most of whom live within 100 miles of the US border. As a result the network topology is quite internet friendly making connections to W Europe quite easy. Often they need fewer "hops" to GenesRU than a user in, say, Sheffield on a busy night around 10am.

Clicking on the thread to see the last reply:
the error message appeared three times, immediately.

If one looks at the digital spy forum site https://forums.digitalspy.com/ there must, surely, be many more threads / topics than in GR, yet the error message does not appear there.

I had trouble refreshing - and noticed, for the past month or so, there was no 'refresh' icon on GR.
It has reappeared today.
I suppose that's our 'servers' fault as well!!!

Ah, now we must go to the local library to access GR.

I must get Karen to add that to her 'how to' list.

Can't see the point of having internet access if we have to do 'X', 'Y', and 'Z' in addition to paying for the darned thing!
I can't be bothered with adverts saying I 'must' have this or that to get something I don't really want.
If a service provider is meant to be providing that service - then that is what they should do.
If a company has a website that people have to pay for, then their site should bloody well work!! :-| :-|
It's not too complicated.

I know that I'm a dinosaur, but my PC does not have wifi capability so I do connect to the modem via an Ethernet cable.

I may try Rollo's suggestion (not the library one) of switching my modem to 5 Mhz.

Incidentally, the browser I switched to and still experienced the same problem was Google chrome

Well, now it's telling me I have a message when I don't!
Is that to do with internet/Wi-Fi/Ethernet/my PC/the colour of my knickers, or, perhaps - the bl**dy site?

What's the colour of yer knickers, Maggie? ;-) :-D :-D :-D

It's a pity that there's no heavy breathing emoticon ;-) :-D :-D :-D

Oh the colour of your knickers and possibly the length of the legs for sure Maggie...

The legs of what?
The length of the legs of my 'granny knickers'?
They're of full length and 'suitably' show when boarding a bus.

The length of the legs of my g gran's sewing table - that the PC is on/around?
Is the sewing table too old, and thus ensures my PC is slow?
Would a formica table do - or is that also too 'retro'?
Should I purchase a glass top table to ensure speed on this site?
Would an 'IKEA' table suffice?

I'm soooo confused :-S

There's always the Public Library ;-) :-D :-D

Hmmm - must look at their tables.
Not sure about asking librarians about their knickers :-S

All of the above unless otherwise informed....maybe it also depends on whether they're bloomers or tighty whities

Maggie, I was told a long time ago that I had four new messages. This is not true, I do not have any new messages. The technical team is unable to resolve this.

For the first time in weeks ............

I got the Error message just now trying to open My Threads :-(