iBrowse is either INCREDIBLY slow or just doesn't load sites

[DanBy]

I'm having issues loading any webpages in ibrowse.

My current set up is an A1200 with a 68030 (TF1230) with 128Meg of fast RAM. Ethernet adapter is a 3c589 PCMCIA card with the appropriate driver installed. Workbench is 3.1

I have installed the latest MUI (5.0), Roadshow (1.14), AmiSSL (5.8) and iBrowse (2.5.8, 68020 no FPU). Roadshow appears to be configured correctly and I can readily ping any website and ping times are acceptable. There's possibly something a little flaky there as one time in ten when I reboot the amiga the DHCP request times out and the network interface is left unconfigured. But this is easily remedied by rebooting once more. Or I can configure for a static IP address and the issue is moot.

The problem arises when I open iBrowse. The software starts as expected but trying to connect to any website either hangs or takes an incredibly long time. I've tried the following websites:

www.google.com
www.aminet.net
www.whdload.de
www.ibrowse-dev.net
www.eab.abime.net

I chose these to test as I know they are relatively lightweight (minimal or no javascript or no use of SSL) and I've seen them load via ibrowse in the past. The only two that managed to load were www.google.com and www.ibrowse-dev.net.

www.google.com loaded slowly but failed to complete loading any images.
www.ibrowse-dev.net completed loading but took about 10 minutes. None of the other tested sites loaded at all. All these sites stall with iBrowse noting "Done sending http request. waiting for response". All the other devices on my network can reach all of these sites without problem.

Any ideas?

Edit: FWIW I did have this installed about 5 weeks ago before I added the TF1230 and things were loading ok.

[Daff]

Can you try with AWeb or NetSurf?

[desiv]

I'll check when I get home, but I wasn't having those issues with iBrowse on my 1200 030/28 with 64M RAM and 3COM PCMCIA card.
I'll double check on the versions of the software I am running.
Especially aminet.net (what I use most often) is fine...
eab is terrible tho. ;-) I usually don't bother with that on the Amiga.
But I know aminet.net (and I believe I tested with the iBrowse site) was fine...
Not using Roadshow, but MiamiDX. (Which should be slower than Roadshow from what I hear)

[DanBy]

Originally Posted by Daff

Can you try with AWeb or NetSurf?

Are either of these available for OS3.1?

[DanBy]

Originally Posted by desiv

But I know aminet.net (and I believe I tested with the iBrowse site) was fine...

Well yeah. I only tried it as I knew when I'd previously set up roadshow/iBrowse about 6 weeks ago it had loaded.

[DanBy]

Just in case there was something amiss with my workbench set up I've built an entirely new OS3.1 install. Now the only things installed other than the OS are

1. scsi.device.43.45 and LoadModule
2. 3c589 drivers
3. CardInfo, CardPatch, CardReset
3. MUI5.0
4. Roadshow 1.14
5. AmiSSL 5.8
6. iBrowse 2.5.8
7. Yam 2.10

I still see the same behaviour with iBrowse. I can ping anything but web pages just don't load.

[klx300r]

no issue here with latest iBrowse, OS3.2.2 and Roadshow with my X-Surf-100.

[Bruce Abbott]

What results do you get from AmiSpeedTest?

Edit: FWIW I did have this installed about 5 weeks ago before I added the TF1230 and things were loading ok.

Have you tried disabling CPU caches?

[itsmedoofer]

Is MUI 5 slowing things down ? Have you tried it with the 3.8 AmiNet release?

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by itsmedoofer

Is MUI 5 slowing things down ? Have you tried it with the 3.8 AmiNet release?

MUI 5 slowed everything down for me, iBrowse included. That said, it still loaded sites normally, even if slowly.

I think the issue lies somewhere else…

Does pinging something like www.google.com from shell work?

Sometimes my connection (Mediator, 10Mbit card) just dies even if it seems to be “working”, it just never loads anything - only way for me to check if that’s the case is to ping something via shell.

[ItsTheSmell]

Does frogfind.com work?

[Futaura]

Try disabling "Persistent connections" in the IBrowse network settings. It seems some network card drivers are broken and cannot handle this feature.

[nikosidis]

Never use MUI 5 on anything other than NG Amigas. IBrowse will still be slow on 030. From what I remember it will take around 5 mins. to load Amigaworld but that is not IBrowse fault. Also disable javascript support.

[DanBy]

Thanks everyone. Hopefully I'll get a moment in the next day or two to try out all these suggestions.

For anyone who asked sending pings to sites works perfectly well and the PCMCIA card I'm using does not seem to die at any point.

Sounds like MUI3.8, disabling "Persistent connections" and javascript and maybe disabling caches are the next things to try.

I have a feeling when I had it working a couple of months ago I was using MUI3.8 so fingers crossed that will be the solution.

[desiv]

Good luck.
I just checked and for Aminet, iBrowse is still working fine speed wise.
I do have MUI 3.8 on my 1200. (OS 3.2.2)
Javascript is set for default, which looks to be enabled.
Just loaded i-browse-dev and it came up decently quick...

[QuikSanz]

On every board I visit it's said that MUI5 is for OS4+. use 3.8, much more responsive. Made for 68K.


Chris

[Futaura]

Originally Posted by QuikSanz

On every board I visit it's said that MUI5 is for OS4+. use 3.8, much more responsive. Made for 68K.

I would recommend 3.9 as the minimum. There are some serious bugs in 3.8, that are impossible to workaround in IBrowse, which were fixed in 3.9.

[Zack]

You can find MUI 3.9 here

[Tarzin]

@Zack, Futaura,
Thanks for the tip!

[DanBy]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What results do you get from AmiSpeedTest?

Hi, again folks, I have finally had some time to sit down and start again. This time I have a fresh OS3.1 install with just 3c589 device, roadshow, CardPatch, CardReset and amispeedtest installed

Best I can tell everything is installed correctly.

Configuring my 3com card with DHCP does not appear to work but manually assigning the IP address, subnet mask, DNS and default gateway appears to work fine. I can then ping servers such as google.com and the ping time is of the order of 10-12ms.

Amispeedtest just appears to hang. Program starts, finding the closest server completes in good time. "Starting download test..." message appears and nothing happens after that. I note that it is attempting an initial 100kb download. I've tried pinging some of the servers it chooses and those all respond around 10-12ms. So I would expect this 100kb download to complete in something of the order of 20-40 seconds.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Have you tried disabling CPU caches?

I see this same behaviour with or without CPU caches disabled