Info on Company based Proxy

RWBRWB Icrontian
edited March 2011 in Science & Tech
I work at a help desk again, doing networking support for hotel guests and such... one big problem I see often is that a guest is connected perfectly fine with an IP and everything, no problems on the server end but they complain about slow connectivity and sometimes are unable to browse at all, but they can connect to their VPN usually just fine which tells me they are definitely connected and can get through.

Of course it's really annoying getting the BS reply, "well this works everywhere else but here", or "I travel all around the world and this is the first time I have had this problem. It seems to me to be proxy related as most of these guests have auto-configuration scripts setup in their LAN settings of Internet Options. Sometimes clearing this helps, other times the problem stays. Sometimes it's intermittent.

I can say our servers block NOTHING as far as ports are concerned so people can torrent and do whatever they want fine... as long as it doesn't overwhelm the traffic for the other guests.

I'm just hoping for input for possible solutions I can try as I'm aware of how proxies work but never actually used one myself. Can't do anything to our servers though, that I thought I should make clear. I'm making this thread in hopes of gaining more knowledge to help people get online even if it's not a problem on my end.

Also this isn't a thread on what proxy is best or anything, I can do a simple search for that. More of a question for those who work with these things and probably even have to deal with us silly hotel help desk guys.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2011
    Have you had the chance to see this for yourself or are you just taking their complaints at face value? When they are complaining what sort of visibility do you have to the network? Can you check bandwidth or even just ping times when there is an issue? Is it specific sites or does it happen to multiple people all at the same time etc...etc.... Have you ever kept track to see if there's a pattern, specific rooms or times of day etc...

    Some things that may help is clearing the cache and log files on your proxy setup. I've seen times where they get bloated or corrupted and can cause weird things to happen seemingly intermittently. The problem with your issue is that you've got no control over the originator of the issue and very little else to go on.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Generally we use several different kinds of servers, and the issue is on all of them. Some of them have more abilities than other for me to see traffic to/from guest computers in a DAT file. I'll usually see something like this, cleaned up so you can't see the IP's and MAC address.

    (1075) 10.0.0.46/2506 (00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) <-> (serverIP)/6104 ---> 0.0.0.1/80 TCP CLOSED to=24
    (1076) 10.0.0.46/2507 (00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) <-> (serverIP)/6106 ---> 0.0.0.1/80 TCP ESTABLISHED to=23

    I just found that randomly, dunno if they have any trouble or not.. but I tend to see it for the guests that are calling in with this problem...
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2011
    Looks like it's dropping the connection. Is there are series of these or just one closed connection then it establishes and it's fine? Still though start tracking times and room numbers and see if there is a pattern. That information really isn't enough to go on.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    OK next time I get a call like this I'll try to get whatever info I can, the information is fairly limited and our newer servers don't give me much to work with, they just tend to work better but lack the intuitive/informative interface of our older servers ironically.
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