mapsedge | For the techies in my life...

So, does anyone know of a network security thing-y that watches URLs and kills any attempt at browsing if the URL gets above a certain length or contains characters that have been URLEncoded?

One of our clients is threatening to tear up their contract unless we can fix that problem, or find a workaround for it...

First step is identifying the cause, and I'm flummuxed. When performing a vehicle search, the URL is about 250 characters long. When you select page 2, it jumps to 671 characters long - that's valid for our system by the way, and none of our other customers have reported a problem.

Only the computers at this one dealership have this symptom: page 1 displays fine. Page 2 returns a blank screen. Not even the obligatory <html></html> in the source that IE seems to toss in just for fun when there's nothing to display. It just dies.

I'm starting by moving some processing out of the querystring and into a text file or the database. That'll shorten it up by quite a bit. I'd like to have a reasonable explanation for the client, though.

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From:

jehosefatz.livejournal.com

Firewall is also possible, since most of them are basically glorified HTTP servers anyway. This would be especially true if they're doing NAT or URL rewriting.

- Jeho

In fact, the more I think of it (and the more coffee I ingest... it's not even 8a here yet) the more likely I think the firewall is the culprit. Depending on what appliance or software they're using it may limiting the URL length and/or also be doing filtering.

Silly me, I guess. I still assume that most businesses are stupid and don't have a firewall.

- Jeho

Ramblings, rumblings, grumblings, and rambling grumbly rumblings.

Conquering the internet, one cup of coffee at a time.

For the techies in my life...

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