carlos wrote:1) They run on a non-standard port 4320
makes no difference as long as the routing and connection are both reliable, and the server is configured correctly (no reason it shouldn't be, it's just a different port) and is able to sustain long connections (again, it should be able to, a download isn't exactly a stressful task)
maybe they can't, or aren't allowed to, use port 80 (the default)
some ISPs block it (so you can't host a site easilly) and if they're on a university campus then it's up to the uni IT staff to decide what they can and can't do, prehaps that IP address is used for other things
there's a long list of reasons, lets just work with what we've got first before demanding major changes
also makes no difference, as long as neil can download the files it doesn't matter if he can get a directory listing
3) Their e-mail server is *not* working
um, sorry? why would he need email?
i think notifying them of the problem would be a good start, at least they can investigate and see if it's a problem their end, i have to say i've had no trouble connecting to them when their server has been stable, but then a page is rather small and time from request initiation to response completion is quite short, no where near as long as a download
you could use
Ethereal to see exactly what's going on and find out why connections are being dropped (capture filter of "port 80" without the quotes)
so how is directory browsing relavent?
For what u use ping and telnet
to test basic connectivity to the server lol, if basic connectivity doesn't work (or isn't reliable) then HTTP sure isn't going to be
(performed on a windows system)
C:\>ping xw01.lri.fr
Pinging xw01.lri.fr [129.175.7.127] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 129.175.7.127: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=53
Reply from 129.175.7.127: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=53
Reply from 129.175.7.127: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=53
Reply from 129.175.7.127: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=53
Ping statistics for 129.175.7.127:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 47ms, Average = 34ms