Facebook problem on Mac.

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MadMailMan

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Hi everybody,

I got a silly problem with the wifee's Mac. She can't get into any of the facebook apps, which used to work fine. Now comes the weird stuff. If I run a tracert from my PC it resolves apps.facebook.com to 69.63.176.11 and gets there in 14 hops. From the Mac it resolves to 69.63.176.15 and timesout at hope 9 (168.209.246.8). If I traceroute to 69.63.176.11 from the Mac it also timesout at hop 9 (168.209.246.8). Both machines use the same DSL connection, same router, same DNS.

Any ideas. Wife is starting to go nuts, 3 days with no Scramble!!!!! :eek:
 
Empty the cache and delete all the cookies, use Firefox.
 
Could facebook just be spreading their server load?

You could always try adding the other IP address to the mac's hosts file and see if it makes a difference.
 
bwana said:
Could facebook just be spreading their server load?

You could always try adding the other IP address to the mac's hosts file and see if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...

Tried that too. But the traceroute to the other IP also drops at hop 9. :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Might be a problem with you DNS cache on the Mac. Are you running 10.4 or 10.5?

Edit: try flushing your DNS cache.

In the terminal enter the following:

on 10.4
lookupd -flushcache

on 10.5
dscacheutil -flushcache
 
Last edited:
Ok the dscacheutil -flushcache managed to get the IP resolution right but the Mac is still only getting to hop 9. I created a new location and new network connection but same problem. This really has be befuzled.
 
Have you tried using the facebook apps since clearing the DNS cache or just a traceroute?

Try traceroute -I as well.
 
icyrus said:
Have you tried using the facebook apps since clearing the DNS cache or just a traceroute?

Try traceroute -I as well.
Click to expand...

Ok, so traceroute -I apps.facebook.com works great all the way to hop 14 (apps.facebook.com). But alas the apps still timeout. :mad:
 
MadMailMan said:
Ok, so traceroute -I apps.facebook.com works great all the way to hop 14 (apps.facebook.com). But alas the apps still timeout. :mad:
Click to expand...

That is weird. Are you behind your own firewall? Has it changed since this problem started occurring?

Can you access the apps fine from your machine?
 
bwana said:
Have you tried apps.new.facebook.com - from www.new.facebook.com?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I will give it a bash shortly.

icyrus said:
That is weird. Are you behind your own firewall? Has it changed since this problem started occurring?

Can you access the apps fine from your machine?
Click to expand...

Using my router as a firewall. No changes there. The Apps work great from the 4 PCs on my network.

I chatted to a mate who is a Mac guru and he is just as stumped. He did suggest trying another ISP account. I just don't have one spare at the moment. :(
 
Create a new user and if you experience the same problems on that user then the quickest solution would be to re-install the OS.
Check your Proxy settings as well should be "*.local, 169.254/16"
 
StbA said:
Create a new user and if you experience the same problems on that user then the quickest solution would be to re-install the OS.
Check your Proxy settings as well should be "*.local, 169.254/16"
Click to expand...

That seems way too drastic.

MadMailMan, does this only happen in safari or in safari and firefox?
 
icyrus said:
That seems way too drastic.

MadMailMan, does this only happen in safari or in safari and firefox?
Click to expand...

I did create another user and had the same problem in both Safari and FF.

I think the Mac just needed a good nights rest cause the wifee tried it this morning and it's working fine again. :confused: <- Doesn't quite capture how I feel at the moment. But at least the "monkey" is off my back. :D

Thanks for you help guys!!!
 
MadMailMan, unfortunately I can't help you with your problem, except to guess that it was some sort of caching (probably DNS) that got in the way.

Just some background information on Facebook. They have around 11,000 servers (last I heard). And you're very unlikely to hit any of them, since they make extensive use of caching services like (just an example, I can't remember the specifics) akamai. Another thing is that they use different systems for different parts of the page you end up seeing.

To give you an idea, I clicked on "Applications" and then "Browse more applications" and this is whta showed in my proxy log:

Code: 
1219497550.391   1405 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 11524 GET http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php - DIRECT/69.63.176.140 text/html
1219497564.325   1434 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 14637 GET http://www.facebook.com/apps/ - DIRECT/69.63.176.140 text/html
1219497564.456    119 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 2142 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/105152/css/apps/index.css - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 text/css
1219497565.082    491 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 770 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/103080/ads/js/fetch_admarket_ad.js - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 application/x-javascript
1219497565.141     57 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 1373 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/113077/ads/js/feedback.js - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 application/x-javascript
1219497565.335    162 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 2747 GET http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/184/2588290420/app_1_2588290420_2299.gif - DIRECT/62.41.85.97 image/gif
1219497565.353    179 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 3389 GET http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/18/2433486906/app_1_2433486906_6410.gif - DIRECT/62.41.85.81 image/gif
1219497565.356    210 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 11400 GET http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads2/flyers/84/29/6002218700138_1_81814044.jpg - DIRECT/80.231.19.119 image/jpeg
1219497565.429     72 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 3245 GET http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/156/5437153164/app_1_5437153164_5669.gif - DIRECT/62.41.85.97 image/gif
1219497565.452    278 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 4857 GET http://photos-538.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v43/178/2558160538/app_1_2558160538_1553.gif - DIRECT/87.248.218.231 image/gif
1219497565.493     41 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 488 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/images/icons/promote_t2_off.png - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 image/png
1219497565.538     44 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 508 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/images/magglass.png - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 image/png
1219497565.573    237 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 5726 GET http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/124/17501549056/app_1_17501549056_7394.gif - DIRECT/62.41.85.75 image/gif
1219497565.580     41 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 400 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/images/components/toggle_tab_gloss.gif - DIRECT/80.231.19.102 image/gif
1219497565.590    237 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 2673 GET http://photos-569.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v43/129/2917270569/app_1_2917270569_1043.gif - DIRECT/87.248.201.87 image/gif
1219497565.627    198 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 2666 GET http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v43/43/4554458539/app_1_4554458539_1802.gif - DIRECT/62.41.85.74 image/gif
1219497565.627     53 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 397 GET http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/images/apps/app_directory_sidebar.gif - DIRECT/80.231.19.119 image/gif

Notice that it never actually hits apps.facebook.com. More likely than not your wife's Mac happened to get a different part of the caching system that happened to be down for whatever reason.
 
I have a similar problem.
I'm with Emburst, and I have problems accessing gmail and facebook.
Sometimes I can get to the first page but thats it, can't go further as conection is dropped.

I'm working off a Mac and have tried connection with PC which works fine.
This is so frustrating as I can access every other site except gmail and facebook.
 
I know this is an old thread, but I've found out recently why this happens. FB has a distributed model for their database infrastructure, i.e. they have many database systems which each holds a portion of the users' details. So when they have problems with one part of the infrastructure, it knocks a couple of thousand/million users off, but 99% of their userbase is unaffected, leading to people like you trying all sorts of stuff to fix their computers...

No, I'm not making this up!
 
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