Yacapaca crashing Internet Explorer.

[FN-GM]

Hi,

 

ICT are using a site called Yacapaca. Its a site used to test the students.

 

It is crashing IE7 & 8 half way through a quiz. It might be a group policy issue but its hard to drill down as it is very Intermittent.

 

Has anyone else has trouble with this site?

 

Thanks

[Edu-IT]

Found this site to be slow and unresponsive at times too.

[Sylv3r]

Is it your internet connection that is causing it to crash? How many students are accessing it at one time? It may just be choking on the bandwith.

[FN-GM]

We have a 100 meg dedicated fibre connection into Zen. When i look out of the office window i can see ZEN HQ. 40 kids on a 100 meg connection so that wont be the problem

[Yacapaca]

Does IE just give up with no error message? The quizzes are running in Flash, so the first suspect is some broken interaction between that and IE. Try reinstalling Flash.

 

It would also be most useful to know if the fault lies in IE or somewhere in the network. If you can, switch some students to Firefox, Chrome or Safari. If it's a network problem, the fault will reoccur. I know breaking away from M$ can be politically difficult in a school.

 

Finally, do report the problem to Yacapaca support. We are always happy to help.

[FN-GM]

Hi,

 

We reported it to your support and the final verdict from yourselfs was use FireFox. But we would like to get it working in IE.

 

Thanks

[Yacapaca]

Did it work reliably in Firefox? If so, this would at least show us where to focus our attention - either on IE itself or possibly on M$ network management tools.

[FN-GM]

Firefox was perfect....

[Yacapaca]

> It might be a group policy issue but its hard to drill down as it is very Intermittent.

 

Can you expand on this? It's not an area I am familiar with, but with some pointers I would know who to ask. I take it this is something that could plausibly affect only IE and not other browsers?

[Batman]

Couldn't resist mentioning Makka Pakka...

 

http://www.bestbear.co.uk/UserFiles/Image/MakaPakaMiniPlushProduct(2)%5B8%5D.jpg

 

By the way, Yacapaca, I do feel for you; I find that 20% of the work in creating a web resource is in actually creating the thing, and the other 80% goes into making it work with IE. Shouldn't be that way, it's a pity the browser is so damn popular.

Edited July 2, 2009 by Batman

[FN-GM]

> It might be a group policy issue but its hard to drill down as it is very Intermittent.

 

Can you expand on this? It's not an area I am familiar with, but with some pointers I would know who to ask. I take it this is something that could plausibly affect only IE and not other browsers?

 

Group policy controls the settings for IE. Something in there could be causing the problem.

[Yacapaca]

Just finished an internal meeting about this. The only thing we are sure of is that it's nothing to do with the server, and by extension can't be related to your network either. Whilst a quiz is running the only communication between browser and server is occasional keep-alive GET requests. Other than that, everything runs locally until after the last question has been answered.

 

Possible reasons, therefore:

1. Flash has got corrupted on some machines.
   
2. IE has got corrupted on some machines.
   
3. Windows has got corrupted on some machines.
   - the answer in all cases above is one degree or another of reinstall.
   
4. The kids have found a way to crash IE (e.g. with some combination of modifier keys and mouseclicks in Flash) and word has got around. Let's face it, winding up the teacher is even more fun than doing a Yacapaca quiz. If it is this, and you can get one of them to confess how the cheat works, I'll definitely owe you a beer!
   

[FN-GM]

# Flash has got corrupted on some machines. - Cant be as its accross the board. Different verison of flash on different machines.

 

# IE has got corrupted on some machines. - Different images on different machines, cant be this

 

#Windows has got corrupted on some machines. - Different images on different machines, cant be this

 

# The kids have found a way to crash IE (e.g. with some combination of modifier keys and mouseclicks in Flash) and word has got around. Let's face it, winding up the teacher is even more fun than doing a Yacapaca quiz. If it is this, and you can get one of them to confess how the cheat works, I'll definitely owe you a beer! - it has crashed when i try it for myself

 

The chances are it will be a security setting some place....

Edited July 3, 2009 by FN-GM

[Michael]

It is crashing IE7 & 8 half way through a quiz. It might be a group policy issue but its hard to drill down as it is very Intermittent.

 

Does this problem occur with any other Flash websites, such as youtube or BBC for example? Do you use a proxy server by any chance? Have you tried from school, then from home using a laptop for comparison purposes?

 

If you've tried it as yourself (presumably as an administrator), I highly doubt it's GPO related, but you could use GPMC to see just what IE policies you've set.

[FN-GM]

It only crashes on that site. I have also tried bypassing the proxy.

 

It think it works fine as an admin

[Yacapaca]

Does this problem occur with any other Flash websites, such as youtube or BBC for example? Do you use a proxy server by any chance? Have you tried from school, then from home using a laptop for comparison purposes?

 

Michael can you sketch out a plausible scenario whereby the proxy could be to blame? I think we have established that it is not in FN-GM's case, but I'm trying to educate myself about the issue generally.

[FN-GM]

Something i should have put. I have set the site to bypass the proxy and set the firewall to give a direct connection to the site.

 

so it is not going through any proxy or any filtering at all.

[Yacapaca]

Reason for my question is that it's important to us that Yacapaca play well with proxies. You have a good last-mile connection, but that's rare. Too many schools still connect to the internet via two yoghurt pots and a piece of string; if 200 kids are going to simultaneously take the same quiz, containing the same 10x1M sound files and/or 20-30 images, a proxy is essential.

[Michael]

Reason for my question is that it's important to us that Yacapaca play well with proxies. You have a good last-mile connection, but that's rare. Too many schools still connect to the internet via two yoghurt pots and a piece of string; if 200 kids are going to simultaneously take the same quiz, containing the same 10x1M sound files and/or 20-30 images, a proxy is essential.

 

Proxies can create all kinds of problems but generally speaking most websites work fine. I would say secure websites (such as banking) can be more problematic than unsecure sites. I don't think specifically this is the source of the problem in this case, but proxies are common in schools these days. Most people don't have a proxy at home, so it's just something else to try out. Typical problems with proxies could be a corrupted cache, overloaded (if the spec is low), or possibly DNS related.

 

In saying that, most if not all proxies do not cache streaming content, and typically Flash is used in this way as with youtube and other sites. In this case a huge internet connection is essential as 20 pupils wanting to watch the same clip will be downloaded 20 times over the WAN.

[Yacapaca]

In saying that, most if not all proxies do not cache streaming content, and typically Flash is used in this way as with youtube and other sites. In this case a huge internet connection is essential as 20 pupils wanting to watch the same clip will be downloaded 20 times over the WAN.

 

So far, we have resisted teacher requests to include video inside Yacapaca quizzes. You have just given me one more reason to continue to do so.

[Michael]

@Yacapaca - To be honest if I created a product and wanted to include video streaming, I would host it internally at the site or make it downloadable only. With servers typically running at 1000Mbps and workstations 10/100Mbps, there should be absolutely no problems at all with Flash content.

Proxies can however be configured to download streaming content, but my understanding is that it doesn't adhere to standard internet protocols, which is why it may do more damage than good.

 

@FN-GM - The only other idea I can think of is try allocating a new profile to your pupils and see if this makes any difference. Name the profile differently (add a 1 on the end or something), so workstations are forced to download the new profile and not use the locally cached version.

[EduTech]

Very True Michael..

 

I dont know, but if the video streaming is going to be huge.. cant you create something similar to clipbank where they have all of the video's locally hosted on the clients site? so then all of the video's are locally hosted (updated daily/weekly) and everything else can stay how it is?

 

James.

[FN-GM]

I doubt it will be profiles as we use local ones. I have created a new default one and still no joy

[Michael]

I dont know, but if the video streaming is going to be huge.. cant you create something similar to clipbank where they have all of the video's locally hosted on the clients site? so then all of the video's are locally hosted (updated daily/weekly) and everything else can stay how it is?

 

Well if you decided hypothetically to host the video clips internally (the most resource intensive aspect), you may as well host the whole lot internally and just have a website promoting the product to new customers. Updates could be scheduled overnight when the network activity is low.

Initially the overheads may be greater shipping pre-configured hosting machines to customers, but longterm it will be cheaper as you'd need quite a few servers to host to many customers and someone full time to manage the whole thing.

 

I doubt it will be profiles as we use local ones. I have created a new default one and still no joy

 

Maybe try and find someone else who uses Yacapaca and see if they have similar/same problems. I think we're getting to point where we've exhausted all possibilities.

[EduTech]

Well if you decided hypothetically to host the video clips internally (the most resource intensive aspect), you may as well host the whole lot internally and just have a website promoting the product to new customers. Updates could be scheduled overnight when the network activity is low.

Initially the overheads may be greater shipping pre-configured hosting machines to customers, but longterm it will be cheaper as you'd need quite a few servers to host to many customers and someone full time to manage the whole thing.

 

Yeah exactly, the server it would require has not got to be anything high end so to speak... and as you say if it updated over night it would be much faster, this is how clipbank do it and it works very well.. linux based as well so it lowers the cost even more.

 

Something to think about i suppose.

 

James.