Other Software > Developer's Corner
Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)
Ath:
Are you losing any network packets between the server and the nearest measurable connection, like a switch that went goofy or something like that (aka: [partial] hardware failure)?
mouser:
loss of packets is quite possible -- but normally in this case doesn't the browser detect that it is having communication problems and stall, etc. I mean thats what i see happen when we know there is a packet loss issue. The result is slow downloads not corrupted ones.
worstje:
Broken hardware is my bet. Several years ago, in a bit of a convoluted setup involving a big room, several bookcases and a troublesome place where the wire came out of the wall, I had a router that balanced on a bunch of heavy law books. And when cleaning, someone apparently made it fall off those books before putting it back as if nothing had happened.
The results were extra-ordinary: rather than have the network connection die or anything of the sort, stuff just started getting garbled. Websites had garbled images with random lines and color shifts and the sorts; HTML documents had random characters happen and so forth. So somehow this entire affair happened somewhere inbetween the layers of error-correction; I suspect the router had its memory or cpu get messed up, but had its networking interfaces still work peachy.
Perhaps your situation is similar in nature here.
JavaJones:
I kind of don't think such an unusual situation as worstje describes is at play. I say that mostly because I've seen similar issues many times from other servers. I personally think it's a failure of the browser's caching mechanisms or something user-side, not server-side (not certain though). Granted it doesn't happen for all downloads, which might suggest it is a server-specific thing, but when it does happen it does seem to (usually) help to clear the browser's cache and download history, so that says something to me...
- Oshyan
mouser:
Its not limited to a specific browser brand -- it happens in all browsers. It's random. Its not a corrupted byte, it's a download that stops somewhere in the middle but ends up with the browser thinking it has successfully downloaded the entire file. And yes, at that point the browser is so convinced that it has successfully downloaded the full file, that it will refuse to redownload it, and will serve up the cached copy when the user tries to redownload -- making the problem much, much worse and more confusing for the user.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version