website slow, smoothwall, company says site is ok, isp says smoothwall is ok help?

[5nowman]

All,

Need some urgent help here.

School has smoothwall. since Monday we have had major slowness accessing a certain website we use to log incidents (don't really want to mention the site but it is used to log safeguarding incidents).

 

We have whitelisted all the sites the company has recommended. we have allowed traffic to the ip addresses they said too.

they asked us to ensure port 80 and 443 was allowed to a range of ip addresses.

 

website works fine out of school.

At school there are LOTS of slowness. 

Browser chrome.

 

IF I put a PC on a hotspot it works fine to the site which rules out extensions, antivirus (sophos) which can also do filtering and browser issues.

 

Soon as we switch it back on the school LAN we get the same issue, site is VERY slow and seems to time out alot. 

 

Packet inspection to the sites and ip addresses give have been disabled. SSL inspection disabled yet it is VERY slow.

My gut tells me there is a url or port that they have not given us to whitelist however smoothwall does not show any blocks. smoothwall shows the school communicating with the site.

 

Is there anything we can try? Everyone is going crazy at the school as this is a very important website.

 

thank you all in advance!

5nowman.

 

 

Edited May 16 by 5nowman

[FN-GM]

Have you checked DNS? What does your monitoring system show, everything healthy or anything to note?

[5nowman]

44 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

Have you checked DNS? What does your monitoring system show, everything healthy or anything to note?

when the pc is on the school network, the url to the site resolves to the same as if it was on the hotspot and I tested a machine at home. every other website works.no errors on anything else.

 

is there an app or something we can use to test connections going out, ports etc even failed attempts from the pc. on the client level

 

we don't use proxy.

 

Also I set the dns to 8.8.8.8 and it was still slow. very slow

 

Edited May 16 by 5nowman

[sigma]

Have you tried a tracert on the LAN and not?

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

Developer tools in Chrome, the network tab will give you response times and error messages on connection.

Do you run Senso? That has filtering as well. Are you using Smoothwall Cloud? As if it's working off network, and you have the cloud filter, unless you are suffering from double filtering, it won't be Smoothwall.

[5nowman]

19 hours ago, sigma said:

Have you tried a tracert on the LAN and not?

tracert done. 1 timeout in a jump

 

tracert done at home, 3 timeouts except the connection to the resource is fine at home.

 

[5nowman]

3 hours ago, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

Developer tools in Chrome, the network tab will give you response times and error messages on connection.

Do you run Senso? That has filtering as well. Are you using Smoothwall Cloud? As if it's working off network, and you have the cloud filter, unless you are suffering from double filtering, it won't be Smoothwall.

No to Senso. We get lots of timeout  messages at the school on the website but not when running off the hotspot or at home. The website is riddled with timeouts. It is as if the site has issues loading at the school and is being slowed / blocked on their end or possibly ours.   which is why I wanted to see if there was anything we can do to see what is timing out.. if even possible.. or even being blocked.

Edited May 17 by 5nowman

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

I'd use developer tools to find out exactly which element. Also, could be your external IP being blocked somewhere for some reason.

 

Does it happen if you set a device's IP as an exception in Smoothwall?

Edited May 17 by ConceroEdu_Matt

[5nowman]

2 minutes ago, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

I'd use developer tools to find out exactly which element. Also, could be your external IP being blocked somewhere for some reason.

 

Does it happen if you set a device's IP as an exception in Smoothwall?

It does happen when  an ip is added as exception on filtering and on firewall so it goes straight out. Tested before and gambling site 888 was blocked, after and it was unblocked. firewall rule allowed all traffic from a single ip to go through without any inspection. Very very slow still to this site. All other sites are ok.

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

So that proves it isn't smoothwall. Exception means traffic doesn't touch it. Therefore, strongly thing it's your external IP on a certain endpoint, that could be being throttled or even blocked.

 

Again, developer tools will show you each element, and times or codes - this would be the next thing to inspect

[tom_newton]

Bear in mind that if you are using smoothwall as a proxy, the DNS requests will be made by the smoothwall - that could show up dns issues where you believe there are none

[Gongalong]

20 hours ago, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

So that proves it isn't smoothwall. Exception means traffic doesn't touch it. Therefore, strongly thing it's your external IP on a certain endpoint, that could be being throttled or even blocked.

 

Again, developer tools will show you each element, and times or codes - this would be the next thing to inspect

 

Technically, that means traffic from the machine isn't filtered. The Smoothwall could still be involved in other bits, as Tom has mentioned.

[5nowman]

2 hours ago, tom_newton said:

Bear in mind that if you are using smoothwall as a proxy, the DNS requests will be made by the smoothwall - that could show up dns issues where you believe there are none

Hi Tom!

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

We don't use smoothwall as a proxy. I suppose the last thing we can do is just bypass the smoothwall totally and plug a pc directly in.

 

This is a really odd one and the company that provide the reporting resource are washing their hands clean!!

 

The site does load but is  extremely slow.

 

  7     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  host-78-144-3-173.as13285.net [78.144.3.173]

  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  9     7 ms     7 ms     6 ms  acc4-hu0-9-1-0.birmingham.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.115]

 

is what we get on jump 8 when doing a tracert.

 

When I try it off a different network where the resource is faster we still get timeouts:

 

 

4     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  7    20 ms    18 ms    26 ms  80.255.204.45

  8    19 ms    35 ms    27 ms  109.159.253.100

  9    21 ms     *        *     62.6.201.156

10    24 ms    25 ms    24 ms  acc4-hu0-0-0-0.birmingham.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.113]

 

but it loads ALOT faster than at the school (first results at the top)

 

 

 

 

[sigma]

1 hour ago, 5nowman said:

Hi Tom!

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

We don't use smoothwall as a proxy. I suppose the last thing we can do is just bypass the smoothwall totally and plug a pc directly in.

 

This is a really odd one and the company that provide the reporting resource are washing their hands clean!!

 

The site does load but is  extremely slow.

 

  7     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  host-78-144-3-173.as13285.net [78.144.3.173]

  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  9     7 ms     7 ms     6 ms  acc4-hu0-9-1-0.birmingham.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.115]

 

is what we get on jump 8 when doing a tracert.

 

When I try it off a different network where the resource is faster we still get timeouts:

 

 

4     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  7    20 ms    18 ms    26 ms  80.255.204.45

  8    19 ms    35 ms    27 ms  109.159.253.100

  9    21 ms     *        *     62.6.201.156

10    24 ms    25 ms    24 ms  acc4-hu0-0-0-0.birmingham.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.113]

 

but it loads ALOT faster than at the school (first results at the top)

 

 

 

 

I would still be asking my ISP to investigate.  

[Gongalong]

1 hour ago, 5nowman said:

I suppose the last thing we can do is just bypass the smoothwall totally and plug a pc directly in.

 

If adding a test PC as a source exception has made no difference then this is definitely the next thing to try. I feel your pain as I've had to do similar in the past. It will eliminate whether it's anything to do with the Smoothwall appliance or not.

[psydii]

Just to re-iterate Matt's suggestion, use the chrome/edge developer tools to see what elements of the website/pages are taking a long time to load, since that might help you track down what is going on as that specific traffic tries to traverse the smoothwall and then your isp.

The Chrome DevTools Network Tab: Debug Page Speed | DebugBear

[5nowman]

3 hours ago, psydii said:

Just to re-iterate Matt's suggestion, use the chrome/edge developer tools to see what elements of the website/pages are taking a long time to load, since that might help you track down what is going on as that specific traffic tries to traverse the smoothwall and then your isp.

The Chrome DevTools Network Tab: Debug Page Speed | DebugBear

Thank you. That is a good site!

 

Everything keeps pointing to timeouts to .js and then subsequant other pages thereafter.  Bringing down the internet at this time to test dns bypassing smoothwall fully etc is not an option

 

I will be cloning the smoothwall external ip etc to a laptop and physically unplug the smoothwall to test out speeds with no man in the middle at all.

 

Any views on this? The laptop will get attacked I know but this has to be done.

[Gongalong]

With Windows firewall or similar and anti-virus on for the laptop? I would think low risk if it's just for a few minutes.

[5nowman]

1 minute ago, Gongalong said:

With Windows firewall or similar and anti-virus on for the laptop? I would think low risk if it's just for a few minutes.

Firewall on AV on.

 

Will rebuild after anyway. Never taking a risk.

 

[5nowman]

On 17/05/2026 at 15:23, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

So that proves it isn't smoothwall. Exception means traffic doesn't touch it. Therefore, strongly thing it's your external IP on a certain endpoint, that could be being throttled or even blocked.

 

Again, developer tools will show you each element, and times or codes - this would be the next thing to inspect

Just want to say thank you too for testing it. everything is still slow for that site. company has washed their hands of it and said it is not a fault on their end.

 

 

[Gongalong]

So even when connected direct and bypassing the Smoothwall completely it's slow?

[5nowman]

1 minute ago, Gongalong said:

So even when connected direct and bypassing the Smoothwall completely it's slow?

 

I cannot connect directly bypassing the smoothwall as this will kick everyone off and we are going to have to schedule it for half term c oming up.

[PaddyNewman]

Just now, 5nowman said:

 

I cannot connect directly bypassing the smoothwall as this will kick everyone off and we are going to have to schedule it for half term c oming up.

Do you not have a dumb switch and spare public IP? Just pop a switch in middle and out you go with a static IP. Its why I always like an Internet vlan so you can just slap another port into that vlan and get past everything for testing. Plugging a box directly into the router means you cant do testing without dropping the lan (if its that big a problem though, tough cookie, its going down at 4pm. Its literally 1 minute of downtime. Work out how slow it's being and what its costing them in time...

 

Admittedly it's only 1 website, but its handy to have for the future, only possible if you have another public IP to static yourself with though. 

[5nowman]

22 minutes ago, PaddyNewman said:

Do you not have a dumb switch and spare public IP? Just pop a switch in middle and out you go with a static IP. Its why I always like an Internet vlan so you can just slap another port into that vlan and get past everything for testing. Plugging a box directly into the router means you cant do testing without dropping the lan (if its that big a problem though, tough cookie, its going down at 4pm. Its literally 1 minute of downtime. Work out how slow it's being and what its costing them in time...

 

Admittedly it's only 1 website, but its handy to have for the future, only possible if you have another public IP to static yourself with though. 

We only have 1 external IP else I Would have tested it incase it was behaviourwatch blocking that ip address. this would have been the perfect test.

I might even find out how much it costs to get an extra external ip address.