Xampp allowing 1 user

[Munkey]

Hi.
I have xampp installed on a win 700mhz 2k3 box with a 200kb/s upload internet connection, and its only allowing one user.

If there is 2 users accessing the site one of them will get the "the browser was unable to establish a connection" message until the page load or download of the other user has finished, only then the other user will be able to view/ download something.

Is my connection too slow for 1+ users? Or is apache/ xampp only allowing traffic to address at a time. As far as I have googled apache does not have a option for limiting connections or speed limits. Even for a simple HTML no-image page it just fails to connect until the other user has buggered off. So what is causing this?

Thanks,
Munkey.

[dmphotography]

My own personal server is also running on Windows 2k3 and I don't have any issues. 700Mhz is an awefully old and slow processor and I would recommend running task manager to see what kind of demand on your processor the apache server is taking. If your server is lagging out, it could cause user's connections to time out. To run task manager in Server 2k3, go to "Run" under the start menu and then type taskmgr. Click on the "performance" tab and watch the graph for your CPU. You can also see the demand for RAM.

A 200kb/s upload should work fine for low demand content. If you're just serving HTML pages, a blog or small forum, it SHOULD work. But if you have lots of large graphics or any multimedia on the page, then your connection may not handle very much of a demand on the bandwidth.

The other place to check would be with any firewall you are using. If you are using a firewall other than Windows, it may be set to only allow a certain number of connections and therefore prevent additional connections from being made. Also your router may have a Maximum number of incoming connections and if that is exceeded, your pages will be unreachable. A single user can generate around 10-20 connections when browsing your web pages just because of how UDP and TCP protocol works. And if your timeout is set high for these, then your maximum connections could be exceeding the limit and blocking additional connections from being made. This is also how DDOS attacks work by making thousands of connections and preventing others from connecting during the attack. I don't fully understand this, but you might check that based on what router your using.

Otherwise, I don't know.

[Munkey]

I don't think it is a firewall, I have one where I can see all connections and what process they are using, and with one person connected(uploading) I am able to browse the site on LAN whilst others on WAN are not.

Any other ideas?

[Izzy]

Is my connection too slow for 1+ users? Or is apache/ xampp only allowing traffic to address at a time. As far as I have googled apache does not have a option for limiting connections or speed limits. Even for a simple HTML no-image page it just fails to connect until the other user has buggered off. So what is causing this?


I don't think it is a firewall, I have one where I can see all connections and what process they are using, and with one person connected(uploading) I am able to browse the site on LAN whilst others on WAN are not.

Any other ideas?

Possibly your router, check your configuration.
http://portforward.com/
http://www.pcwintech.com/node/8

[Munkey]

Nope. Ports are already opened. I think it is software based as if there is one lasting connection (using the process apache.exe) it will block all others... Frustrating.

[Izzy]

ZoneAlarm, Anti-Virus scanners etc.?

Apache is not designed to block on the contrary.

Something between Apache on port 80 and your router (if as you say it is configured correctly) or Apache on port 80 and your browser and your router.

Investigate you browser settings perhaps.


You could try this but I don't think it will help but it will do no harm either.

Find this line (about line 53 in a fresh 1.7.0) in xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf file:
Listen 80

Change to:
Listen *:80

Save the file and restart apache but make a Copy of httpd.conf file first.

Test your issue again.

[dmphotography]

I don't think it is a firewall, I have one where I can see all connections and what process they are using, and with one person connected(uploading) I am able to browse the site on LAN whilst others on WAN are not.

Any other ideas?

Your WAN and LAN behavior is very different. Your router is designed to allow unrestricted traffic and access in your LAN, and restricted/monitored traffic in your WAN connections. If your router allows you to see how many connections you have, then check what your Maximum Ports is set to, then check your TCP Timeout and UDP Timeout settings are.

If your Maximum Ports is set too low, then it will deny any additional incoming traffic. If you can see how many connections your router is making, you should be able to compare these numbers. If the incoming connections either match or exceed your Maximum Ports settings, then your guests will not be able to reach your website and get timeout errors.

This is how DDOS attacks work by flooding your computer/router with TCP/UDP connections and then exceeding the Maximum Ports, which will deny you an internet connection until it stops and the TCP/UDP connections time out.

As Izzy stated, it's definitely not Apache doing it. It's either your router, firewall, or your CPU maxing out because it's under too much of a load and this will cause a timeout on an old, slow processor.