Hello everyone. I have a good one here, i think.
Here we go;
When we try to access the following webcast;
http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx
It launches Windows media player (version 9 on Windows 2000 workstations). We use Linux proxies (three of them), checkpoint firewalls on Nokia devices and packet shaper to control traffic on our 25 Mb link to the Internet.
We have a .pac file that all users load that chooses which proxy you will use and off you go browsing.
To get back to the webcast, it launches WMP and it starts to buffer the data. It gets normally up to about 40% then starts to decrease the same way it increased, little by little, all the way back to 1%. Then the buffering starts all over again. It can do this for a very long time. Sometimes it manages to launch the webcast for a few seconds and then it buffers again.
Now normally this would seem to be either an application issue or an issue at the source. But if i transfer the proxy settings to our other Internet link in another city (where the configuration is identical except that the link speed is 4X larger), none of this occurs. The webcast performs normally.
I have checked all interfaces between the workstation and the Internet link and none show congestion, bottlenecks, error or excessive use. I have sniffed the traffic between the workstation and the proxy and between the proxy and the firewall. I see nothing unusual there. I have asked the administrator of the proxies and the firewall to check at their end and they replied that they see nothing wrong.
I am at a lost here. I work for a company in the financial field and webcast are often use for quarterly reports and news here. They need this stuff but i cannot figure out what’s happening. This problem started this week and does not seem to affect sites such as youtube.com or abcnews.com. But they send their broadcast to a web page.
Any leads would be greatly appreciated.
