The Driving Instructor!!!

[Phill Fenton]

Just checked again using AOL – and it’s still happening!!!!!

[Robert Lambie]

thanks for pointing this out to me phill..
actualy. i have just been chatting via e-mail to a regular on the iste about probs with phpbb & aol..
i have never heard or had any probs in the past until this one.. if it is a problem that is 😕 ill ask rob what he thinks..
the only thing i have ever noticed about aol and the site is the layout is all off… no border pin lines and the scrolling latest post seem to stretch the length of the page.. looked pretty ugly actualy.. i had a check in on the site on sunday in a service station on my way back from london.. what a shock i got..
is this the same layout as the rest of AOL users get.. its spot on in mozilla and internet explorer.. havent looked any place else though.. 🙄
anyone?

[Phill Fenton]

I think maybe it depends on which version of AOL is being used. When I view the site with Internet explorer – it looks tha same as when I view it with AOL.

The problem is still there now though – I got here on AOL by following a link on my topic reply notification which seems to work. All a bit odd really (?)

[Robert Lambie]

just had a thought phill, but a long shot..
rob is redirecting the site to the new servers this week.. so maybe has somthing to do with that… who knows? 🙄

[Administrator 2]

well I’ve not started the server moving just yet (tho I was thinking about doing that just now).

The thing is that AOL dosn’t provide you with a connection to the internet. they do something a bit sneaky. basicaly thier software sits on you’re computer and intercepts calls that should go to the part of windows that normaly provides internet services and asks the AOL network to ful fill these requests.

This has a few consequences. AOL control what is and isn’t visable via thier service, which leads to a whole host of legal and ethical issues about letting a company like AOL Time Warner control all of what you can see and hear, but that’s another story. Also it means that there is another layer of technology between you and you’re favorite sign related websites, the AOL network, this is what I expect to be at fault here, probably a short term fault which means that AOL thinks that the https://www.uksignboards.com server is infact another server that hosts someone’s driving website. these sort of issues are un-common on the internet at large because users get access to the root name servers directly (the computers that translate the https://www.uksignboards.com URL that we all know and love into the horrible 194.106.33.39 that computers use to identify it directly). The problem is that with soo many people needing these translations the job has to be spread out a lot, and so every lookup is 3rd or 4th hand down the chain, where each computer will try and keep a list of as many of these lookups as it can so that it already knows the answer next time it sees someone asking for that URL to be converted, and can answer rather than pass the request on. obvoiusly there are billions of these request every day and so an ocasional error can creep into these exchanges and you end up looking at the wrong website. this often stays arround for a long while because some of the computer near you are remembering the faulty value and so give you that rather than making a fresh request up the chain. AOL has probably got a faulty value in thier cache server. there are 2 ways to fix this, if you contact AOL and let them know it’s happening they can probably fix it, but it’ll take you a lot of effort to convince them that you know what’s going on and get them to fix it…. where as, there is a expery date attached to each of these values, after which they are considered out of date and a fresh coppy must be fetched from the main servers. generaly this a few hours long, but again based on the fact that these dates are passed down the chain it can take up to 48 hours for a change to filter through down to us mear mortals at the bottom of the food chain (not sure if AOL might take a little longer, I’ve not used them for a long time) so if it’s still playing up after 48 hrs then we’ll have to look into it a little more closly.

The reason lost of AOL users have problems with phpBB’s is quite complex and has a lot to do with the way AOL works thier internet service. you ask them and they get the page and give it to you. now to do this they have a lot of very powerful internet connection, each of which has a different number assigned to it (the 194.106.33.39 style addresses) in the newest version of phpBB 2.0.4 there is a added security feature that tries to stop “crackers” from trying to hack into the board by doing variouse nasty things by sending commands and posts that apear to be from other users who are logged in at the time by not allowing these commands if youre IP number (e.g. 194.106.33.39) is not the same as the one you logged in with. now since AOL has a lot of these numbers assigned to the computers that get websites for AOL users each time you ask for a page there is a chance that you will apear to be connecting from a different IP number so phpBB 2.0.4 blocks it as a security measure. there have been a number of fixes surgested to this, and there is a lot of though arround how to keep the security intact without making it hit and miss for AOL users. at the moment this dosn’t effect UKSB since we’re not using this part of 2.0.4 but it might do in the near future when I try and implement this for security reasons, tho I am holding off doing that untill a work arround has been found for this problem with AOL.

well I hope I’ve not board you all to death 🙂 I did try and keep it light, but as always my rambling has started to border into geek speak 🙄

let me know if these problems with AOL continue beyond 48 hours, and I’ll see if I can help you sort somthing out. I’m avalible on AOL instant message as “dArkAngelLav” since I’m sure you’ll have that to hand since you’re on AOL 🙂

[/geekism]

Activity Feed

[Redproud]

I am also having the same problem as Phill using AOL version 6, first noticed the problem today at around lunch time when i tried to access the uksignboards site.

Hopefully it will get sorted soon.

David

[Lorraine Buchan]

I had same problem too, on AOL 7.0, But its fine as of now as i’m on AOL and have accessed it no problem

[Kevin Flowers]

quote lorraine:

I had same problem too, on AOL 7.0, But its fine as of now as i’m on AOL and have accessed it no problem

Hi
me to , but disconnected and then reconnected and all was fine

KTF 😀

[John Childs]

Perhaps its a subliminal message.

You all need driving lessons. 😀