IT/Networking Experts

John am Rhein · November 20, 2007

Here are two mystery problems I've had recently that, while not critical (i.e. we can work around them) are a bit of an irritation, particularly as the IT support people don't seem to know what about to do about them and there seems to be very little reference to anything similar online. Anyone know much about these and even what to do about them?

1) ActiveSync caching: we connect PDA devices to PCs using USB and Microsoft's ActiveSync software. The PCs are connected to the internet via our corporate proxy server (of which more later). The software on the PDAs uses a certain custom component that needs to be reinstalled whenever a new version is available. When this happens, the user is prompted to download the new version in a .CAB file from a supplier's website, the new version is then installed, the device reset and it can then be used again. The problem is that we don't always seem to get the latest version of the .CAB file even though it's available on the website. The PDA device seems to download an old version which we think must be because either proxy server or ActiveSync is caching it somewhere and provides this copy instead of the latest one. Anyone know where ActiveSync puts this cache (assuming it actually uses one?) and/or how to stop it doing this? Or alternatively, is the problem likely to be caused by something completely different?

2) (Apparent) proxy server timeout: sometimes a certain web application we run in InternetExplorer (Firefox NOT supported) starts a relatively long-running (several minutes) process on a server and it seems to receive no response for the duration of this process - simply waiting until the process finishes before, popping up a 'Completed' message box and allowing the user to continue. This works, albeit not very helpfully, with a direct connection to the internet, but when we connect through the corporate proxy server, a failure occurs. The web application receives response code 503 "Service Unavailable" which, since the service most definitely IS available, suggests to me that the proxy server is giving up waiting for a response and sends the 503 response back to the client which, therefore, never gets the actual response from the server. Something that, IMO, adds weight to this theory is the fact that the error always seems to occur after exactly 180 seconds (i.e. 3 minutes) which again points to a timeout issue of some kind. Anyone know if this is likely to be correct and/or how to confirm this definitively - and, of course, how to fix it, if that's actually possible.

First person to suggest reinstalling Java wins a free ticket to the Man U game.

nvdm · November 20, 2007

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