Website hangs intermittently.

[#1]

My website http://www.frangipanibeads.co.uk appears to hang (intermittently) when loading.
Last month I raised a ticket with Plus Net but they say there's nothing wrong with their servers. So I've spent a lot of time investigating my own broadband connection.
The problem appears on all my machines/browser combinations (Mac OS X 10.3/10.4/10.5, Windows XP, Safari, IE 6/IE 7, Firefox, Camino).
I've checked my connectivity with the wireless connection, with machines hardwired to the Broadband router, everything!!!! I've also checked the router itself and done a 'Fault diagnosis test on the line. Plus Net says there's no problem with it, except for a low speed 512 kbps.
Everything looks fine my side.
When I'm at work the website appears to respond well (Windows XP/IE6). But when I'm at home, I still get the website hanging. Today I asked a friend to load the website from his own computer (who is not in Plus Net) and lo and behold, he is also experiencing a hanging website around 50% of the time.
I can only conclude the problem is with the Plus Net web servers. Does anyone else have this problem with their sites on Plus Net?
Regards,
Martin

[#2]

Quote from: martinws

I can only conclude the problem is with the Plus Net web servers. Does anyone else have this problem with their sites on Plus Net?

In a word, no.  Or not that I'm aware.  We have http://www.happychild.org.uk hosted with Force 9 (since March 1998) and http://www.freeway.plus.com (amongst others) hosted with PlusNet since 2000.
There have been a few hiccups over the years but the hosting quality on the homepages servers is generally awesome (in my experience, anyway), and even at busy times (3000-ish pages an hour) I haven't been aware of any "hanging" of the type you describe.
Just accessed your website with Firefox and IE6 and it seems to load fine from here. However I assume most/all ISPs cache frequently-accessed pages so perhaps that has some bearing on your problem somewhere?  Additionally your site's somewhat more sophisticated with cookies, buying facilities, Mac Web Gallery etc. so perhaps this is also a factor (all the pages I put on the homepages server are just straightforward static html pages).  With IE6 your site wouldn't give me any access at all to the Mac Gallary, btw.
Hope you get things sorted, anyway
Regards,
Penny.

[#3]

Hi Penny,
The problem does appear to be intermittent. Some pages just loaded fine but the last page I tried just hung. 
I don't think it's the cookies/buying facilities, since they would only activate when the user selects them, after they loaded properly ?!?
Thanks for the note about the Gallery. That part is hosted on a separate site (.mac) setup automatically using Apple iPhoto. A bit annoying that!

[#4]

Is it the workshop pages that hang? The link from the Wire Sculptures page to Workshops goes to crumpetsfarm.com not www.crumpetsfarm.com and doing a DNS lookup on the two variations gives different results - something a bit odd there!

[#5]

Hi Jelv,
I've seen it happen on both my sites http://www.crumpetsfarm.com and http://www.frangipanibeads.co.uk.
The funny thing is, I've loaded the websites successfully from my (fast) works connection. But when I get home they are continually hanging and my friend sees it also.
It's as if the webservers at plus net have been tuned in the past few months to having a fast connection and the slow connection I have is simply not receiving all the files sent to it. My browser then hangs expecting a file which plus.net believes has already been sent!!!!
Or perhaps my connection (and my colleagues) is so unstable we drop files. Strange all other website do not exhibit this issue very often.
Regards,
Martin

[#6]

Parts of your site are on http://crumpetsfarm.com - where is that?

C:\Documents and Settings\John>nslookup www.crumpetsfarm.com 212.159.13.49
Server:  pth-cdns01.plus.net
Address:  212.159.13.49
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    homepages.plus.net
Address:  212.159.9.131
Aliases:  www.crumpetsfarm.com

C:\Documents and Settings\John>nslookup www.frangipanibeads.co.uk ; 212.159.13.49
Server:  pth-cdns01.plus.net
Address:  212.159.13.49
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    homepages.plus.net
Address:  212.159.9.131
Aliases:  www.frangipanibeads.co.uk

C:\Documents and Settings\John>nslookup crumpetsfarm.com 212.159.13.49
Server:  pth-cdns01.plus.net
Address:  212.159.13.49
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    crumpetsfarm.com
Address:  212.159.8.1

[#7]

I believe I've removed all the http://crumpetsfarm.com issues. However, I do not believe this is the problem.
The website hangs on pages which did not have this domain issue and surely, Apache is not going to trawl all the pages on my website looking for bad domains only to hang when 'good' pages?
Martin

[#8]

Looking at the code on the pages there is a lot of it and you load loads of clear.gifs I would say there is just so much code that its hanging on some browsers trying to work out whats going on and making multiple requests for clear.gif among others.
The pages could be so much faster loading if it was written in better code