LinkedIn Tech Support

It keeps bugging me and wondering why people think LinkedIn would be a good platform for tech support.

Hello,

We have 4 Citrix servers running on Server 2003 and we’ve had a problem lately to where internet browsing stops, but we are able to ping out from the server. We cannot view any websites nor browse the network. Is there someone out there that knows what the problem could be?

I can’t actually think of any other answer than the fact that this coming from really clueless people. I tried to give the guy an honest answer and to ask him for one. I didn’t want to be some bofh. But really. How come this kind of people get to ask this kind of questions? Actually, I feel I know the answer, but just can’t describe it.

$user,

Internet browsing is about being able to make tcp connections on port 80 and 443.

Browsing the network, is, I assume for you, about browsing Windows networks, as in Netbios based stuff, which goes about ports 135-139 on UDP and/or TCP.

Pinging is all about ICMP and basically on pure IP level, which means you have basic network access, but some problem more on the application level. Or you have a firewall selectively blocking some stuff of course.

I’m not sure if the Ciitrix portion of your problem description is important.

Please review your network basics, and start testing 1. on IP level, 2. on TCP level (telnet comes to mind), 3. and maybe a proxy on application level; and try to figure out where the problem is exactly. Either way, you give way to few information to help you out.

Does it make any diference if you test locally without going through Citrix? If yes, what’s te difference between your $localhost or the Citrix server, network wise?

About the following, I’m going to ask you an unrelated question. Sorry if I’m a bit annoying here, I don’t intend to, really. Why do you think LinkedIn is a good platform for asking tech support questions? This is a honest question. I can’t figure out why I would use it as such. I’m sure there are other web platforms that are more suited for this.

O, and if you wonder why I keep blogging about those annoying LinkedIn answers: I once had an interesting lead thanks to it. Reason enough.

Update: my answer was selected as best answer, the telnet trick dit it 🙂

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