Chrome: Waiting for available socket...

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

Has anyone come across this Chrome problem, or have any suggestions?

 

The issue is when I open more than a handful of tabs I start to get “Waiting for available socket…” on the new tabs, and the page doesn’t open. It’s only happening on my PC, so not a school wide issue, but still infuriating!

 

The only thing that Google throws up is to open chrome://net-internals/#sockets and “Flush Socket Pools”. That works for a bit, but the problem keeps returning.

 

Other browsers (IE and Edge) seem fine, but I don’t tend to open as many tabs, or use them for hours at a time.

 

Things I’ve tried:

 

1. Flattened PC and reinstalled Windows (10 1703).

2. Latest network driver, latest PC BIOS update (Asus mobo with Intel NIC).

3. Alternative USB NIC.

 

Odd things: this only happens when I’m using our Smoothwall as a gateway. If I switch to our second “normal” Internet connection (BT ADSL) it’s fine. Although the suggestion is this is a Chrome specific issue, rather than something downstream of that.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[ZeroHour]

I actually saw this happen on my rig here on its own 1GB connection, if I recall it seemed to get better after I updated chrome to the latest stable build.

It may be worth checking if the beta version of chrome has the issue as well.

[Gongalong]

I've had this for a few months now, hence the frustration. Currently on 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit). Will try the beta.

 

Another thing I've tried is an IPCONFIG /RENEW, and setting to a manual IP. Neither made any difference.

[ZeroHour]

Do you use anything that could be controlling your clients firewall?

[Gongalong]

Nothing. Someone else has suggested that perhaps the Smoothwall thinks the client is flooding it with requests, so is throttling that. Next time it recurs I'll give them a call.

[bald_pig]

chrome://net-internals -> sockets -> Flush socket pools

 

happens to me at home sometimes

 

 

*EDIT* oops, helps if I don't skim read!

[Gongalong]

It does seem to help, but the problem continues to recur.

[bald_pig]

I've found that it normally takes a long time to reoccur, than happens a few times really quickly, then takes ages again. I believe it's caused by https connections not being closed properly, so chrome keeps them open and active.

[ADMaster]

Are you behind a Cisco ASA at all. There was a couple bugs that caused white loading / timeout screens for some applications on chromebooks.

https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCui80835

https://quickview.cloudapps.cisco.com/quickview/bug/CSCuq80704

 

Your issue sounds a bit different but worth a look.

[Sylv3r]

I occasionally see it here too with chrome and smoothwall. Again, only probably on my machine due to the number of tabs and period of time they are in place for.

[Gongalong]

@ADMaster No, we just have the Smoothwall.

[Gongalong]

So far the Chrome beta hasn't had the problem...

[Gongalong]

It recurred again with the beta.

 

I spoke to Smoothwall support, and they're wondering if it's related to using NTLM authentication. So they've added a new auth policy specifically for my PC, which uses just Core Authentication. Testing...