Since I started using this forum, I'd get occasional occurrences where clicking on a topic, next page, etc would result in a 30-60 second pause followed by a blank page. A view source would show HTML headers and a body/end body pair and end html... looked like whatever engine is used for dynamic page generation would just time out and send an empty page. When that happened refreshing or retrying was almost always ineffective unless I waited 5-10 minutes. After the wait it would usually respond normally for a while. It happens on two different home systems, plus a work wintel box.
There's no error; no messaging about being unable to reach the server, or no such page; the server is there, its just apparently kicking blanks.
There is no indication of general internet access problems; other sites respond and are usable during the hangs.
Over the last couple of weeks there have been times where it takes 20-30 minutes (or more) before responding again, and it loses the 'unread message' pointers when that happens (the "show unread posts since last visit" list only gives me the messages that came in during the period since I had just started reading messages before the hangup). When that happens I see messages with timestamps during the period where I could not get a response.
I haven't seen others post here about symptoms like this, so I just want to find out if its a known issue or if there's a workaround; losing the unread message lists makes it really hard to keep up.
Main system: PowerMac G5 2x2.5, OSX V10.4.8, Firefox V1.5.0.9, SonicWALL TELE-2, Comcast cable service
Secondary: DEC PWS600au, OpenVMS V7.3-2, Mozilla V1.7.13, SonicWALL Soho-3, Megapath static (business class) ADSL
The shorter hangs have happened at work; winXP SP2, Firefox V1.5.09
I tried the various cache clearing and temp file cleanups, as applicable to these browsers and it made no difference.
Thanks!