ATT wireless network inserting extra characters into web page?

[bradz]

Over the last two weeks several individuals in different parts of the USA have noted extra characters in some web pages when on the att network.
The same server is sending out the same sites fine, when viewed on all other internet providers we have tested. We have also tested multiple browsers. Interestingly, if you use the secure layer - https, the site is fine, no extra characters.

Question, does anyone have any suggestions as to the cause, has anyone also seen this, can any settings or anything on the server hosting software, etc, precipitate or stop this?

Any input is welcome, you can read more at
http://forums.att.com/t5/Apple/php-issues-over-att-network/td-p/4050420

Thanks for any input!
Brad

 

[bradz]

ATT, one of the largest wireless network carriers in the USA has changed how they handle the file transfers, causing the above issue.

"AT&T recently changed their wireless proxy servers to assume that certain web mime types are delivered in GZIP format. By turning on GZIP compression of the following mime types for all our websites, we were able to solve the problem: AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml"

Question: Does Plesk 12 need an update to correct the errors caused by this change, should this be corrected by ATT or do I need to make the above change and if so does someone have some how-to instructions?

Any another factors to consider?

Thanks for any input.
Brad

 

[UFHH01]

...

Question: Does Plesk 12 need an update to correct the errors caused by this change, should this be corrected by ATT or do I need to make the above change and if so does someone have some how-to instructions?

Any another factors to consider?

Thanks for any input.
Brad

Hi Brad,

sorry to say that, but ATT wireless proxy configurations are not at all an "all-over-the-world" configuration, even that it is nice, that ATT seems to care about useless bandwidth usage and how to reduce it, it's not up to them to decide, if files are delivered compressed or not - even if a non compressed file is delivered over THEIR network, they have no rights to decide compressing it, to reduce bandwidth. This sort of configuration is a choice and ATT has no rights to force their users to reduce bandwidth by compressing it during the delivery over their network. The will soon get sued for that, I'm sure, and will have to re-change this modification.
So the answer on your question if Plesk 12 needs an update is: No!

For your own Plesk 12 configuration, you might want to change your vhosts - templates ( http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-linux-advanced-administration-guide/index.htm?fileName=68693.htm ) or have a look with the search option "custom vhost" here in the forum and as well search option "gzip" here in the forum, to read some suggestions and solutions for this issue, so that all your domains compress files over your webserver(s). There are several ways to configure apache, php5-fpm and nginx for using gzip compressions. The "Knowledgebase" from Plesk has some good, short articles as well for such a general modification ( http://kb.odin.com/en/ )

 

[bradz]

Poor Move by ATT

I totally agree and I do hope ATT gets a different take on this, very disappointing that they did this.

Thanks, I will learn more about this and see if I can at least resolve it for me. Brad

 

[TomBoB]

We set up our servers (CentOS 6.5, Plesk 12.0.18) a while back to automatically serve content compressed. Idea was to preserve some bandwidth and have customer sites load a hint faster. Could it be a solution for you with above problem? Following is extract of my notes:


to automatically add GZIP compression to all handed-out websites: run command

# grep ‘mod_deflate’ /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

than add the following to your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

####
# Deflate output configuration
#

#Set to gzip all output
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

#exclude the following file types
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|iso|tar|bz2|sit|rar|png|jpg|gif|jpeg|flv|swf|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary

#set compression level
DeflateCompressionLevel 9

#Handle browser specific compression requirements
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0


and than check syntax, restart the webserver

# /usr/sbin/apachectl -t
# /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful
# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

 

[bradz]

Thanks so much TomBoB! This will be very helpful!

On a side note, We did get the interest of a Developer at ATT, they are looking into this. They may be able to pass on the info to the correct departments. I will post if I learn any more. Brad

 

[bradz]

I am very happy to report from the PA-NY region, It is fixed!
They started on the west coast and worked east.
Thanks to everyone that helped pin down and pass on information, getting this solved! All of the input helped including this forum.
I would like to add a special thanks to AT&T Developer Support who helped gather info and passed it on to the correct groups!
Thanks so much to all!
Sincerely,
Brad

 

[Faris Raouf]

We set up our servers (CentOS 6.5, Plesk 12.0.18) a while back to automatically serve content compressed. Idea was to preserve some bandwidth and have customer sites load a hint faster. Could it be a solution for you with above problem? Following is extract of my notes:


to automatically add GZIP compression to all handed-out websites: run command

# grep ‘mod_deflate’ /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

than add the following to your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

####
# Deflate output configuration
#

#Set to gzip all output
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

#exclude the following file types
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|iso|tar|bz2|sit|rar|png|jpg|gif|jpeg|flv|swf|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary

#set compression level
DeflateCompressionLevel 9

#Handle browser specific compression requirements
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0


and than check syntax, restart the webserver

# /usr/sbin/apachectl -t
# /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful
# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Ideally this shouldn't be in httpd.conf because this file is prone to be overwritten by Plesk, especially during an upgrade.

The best solution is to put it in /etc/httpd/conf.d/mod_deflate.conf (create the file if it doesn't exist) (exact location may vary from os to os -- this is where you'd put it for Centos/Redhat type OSes)