Satellite connection - images show as broken

but not on dial-up or cable

[tedster]

Why would this be?

Same web page that renders fine over dial-up or cable renders with all image links broken on a satellite connection. Other web pages display fine over the satellite connection. IE 6 browser, not sure of Windows version.

[martinibuster]

If I'm not mistaken, satellite connections are heavily cached. That's how that technology works. It's not really connected to the web. When you are looking at something, you're not necessarily connecting to the actual site but to a cache of it. Maybe that's oversimplifying it, but I'm 90% sure of that. And if so, then the satellite cache may have stripped the pics off to save space/bandwidth, perhaps. My guess.

[tedster]

That's certainly a possibility - any idea how we would check into that? Shouldn't a GET for an uncached image cause the system to go find the image, ASAP?

[Key_Master]

Check to make sure a referrer block (e.g. via .htaccess) isn't being utilized on the site in question to prevent image hot linking. Since you're pulling a page using a proxy, the referrer may not be pointing back to the site and is being blocked as a result.

[martinibuster]

Oh, also important, a satellite compresses the data being streamed to earth and then it is decompressed and routed. That's another issue.

[mdharrold]

Tedster, if you are using the MSN satellite service, I've had others tell me the same thing.
Never heard of a work-around.
Maybe, and I'm only guessing, have the images pull from a site that is not likely to be cached.

[tedster]

Keymaster - I think you've pointed me in the right direction.

It's not .htaccess in this case, but the pages/images are password protected, cookies are checked on every call, and it's an https: connection. Somewhere in that tangle there's a problem with the proxy. We checked non-protected areas and it's all sweet.

Thanks, folks. This is a live situation, with an important person on the client end wanting to look at the pages and running into trouble -- even as you send me ideas. Where else but wmw could I get this kind of help?