Tutor
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7 Messages
php issues over att network
Any php files on the website work fine across all browsers, phones etc except on AT&T service the php functions are replaced with semi random characters. As well, a 0 is placed at the bottom of every php page. If we switch the device over to Wifi, problems are gone.
If all include/include_once functions are removed the page works fine.
Also, this doesn't seem to be specific to just Apple devices.
If all include/include_once functions are removed the page works fine.
Also, this doesn't seem to be specific to just Apple devices.
Carl_S
Contributor
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1 Message
10 years ago
I had the issue also with a PHP page.
The issue is the Transfer-Encoding: chunked header and the gzipping AT&T is doing. The numbers you are seeing are the chunk sizes - with this encoding, the server sends the page in pieces, with each piece preceeded by a count of the bytes in that piece. All browsers will remove those chunk size numbers when displaying the page.
Now that AT&T is gzipping those pages, the browsers are getting confused and leaving those chunk sizes in the page after unzipping it. I am not sure why they do not do the unzip, then remove the chunk sizes, but every browser that I have tested, including Fiddler do it this way.
So, AT&T should probably not be zipping these pages since it's breaking them.
There are ways to fix it on a page - if it's a PHP page, you can add the following to the top of the page:
I am not sure that the second line is needed - got it from a Stack Overflow thread.
Hope that helps. I spent way too much time debugging this for an issue AT&T has surely been getting a lot of complaints about. Likely many sites are doing the cache-control headers, or run on servers with chunking off.
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bradzehr
Tutor
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11 Messages
10 years ago
Thanks so much Carl!
I does work. My problem is that I would need to add it to a crazy number of sites.
I just passed your info on to an ATT developer who is trying to get this to the correct people. I do hope they correct this. Brad
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spiderbob007
Contributor
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1 Message
10 years ago
According to the PHP documentation: zlib.output_compression is preferred over ob_gzhandler()
http://php.net/manual/en/function.ob-gzhandler.php
I added the line zlib.output_compression = On to my php.ini file and the issue was resolved for all my php pages.
ob_gzhandler() still left some artifacts on some of the pages.
Thanks to all for pointing me in the right direction.
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joebahoe
Tutor
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4 Messages
10 years ago
I don't know why these characters are displaying, but I think I have an idea of what they are. They aren't random -- they seem to be the character count for each of the files associated with that page.
The hexadecimal numbers appear above all of my include files on scripting pages (.asp, .php. .shtml). I discovered that when I add a blank page that is .shtml with a single character ("a"), it displays as "1 a 0" on my mobile browser with AT&T cellular connection. I added a "b" and it displayed "2 ab 0." A page with just "abcdefghijk" displayed "B abcdefghijk 0." "B" in base 16 = 11, which is the number of characters in "abcdefghijk."
So I used a character counter and counted the characters in my header file and came up with 3,776 characters. I converted the hexidecimal characters appearing on the page above that include file (EFB) and it came out to 3,835. The 59 character difference appears to be spaces that the counter doesn't consider.
I tired this on a few files and it seems to be the case every time. I still don't know "why" they are appearing, but at least it seems I have a clue "what" is appearing.
I hope this helps.
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Zambaras
Contributor
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1 Message
10 years ago
I'm having this problem too only on AT&T's network. Not surprisingly, this problem goes away when I activate a VPN such as ProXPN or my own corporate VPN. AT&T is doing deep packet inspection and doing things to 'tweak' the HTML that is being sent to you. This not only means they can watch what you're doing, but they can (and actually ARE) changing the results that the webservers you connect to are sending you. Not good. USE a VPN. SSL everywhere and encrypt everything. 🙂
I find it objectionable that an ISP would modify the HTML that's being sent over the pipe. Pretty shady.
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RobertBZ
Contributor
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2 Messages
10 years ago
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bradzehr
Tutor
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11 Messages
10 years ago
Hi RobertBZ, I have many examples of text being added to pages.
On this page, I see a c9 in the footer area - http://www.dorenedwhitney.com/photogallery.php
I also see extra characters on this site http://www.esbba.com/
Progress Note:
After submitting a form to the att developers group, I was contacted and they have informed me that they are working on this, and they may be close to solving the issue. Thanks to everyone for input on this topic. It will be great to see this resolved. Sincerely, Brad
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joebahoe
Tutor
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4 Messages
9 years ago
RobertBZ: Here's a link to one of our sites: http://www.llajobs.com/
The numbers are appearing above include files, so the header, navigation, and footer.
As I mentioned before, it really looks like character counts for each of the files.
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joebahoe
Tutor
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4 Messages
9 years ago
It looks like the issue is resolved. I didn't change anything on the site or our server and the hex numbers are no longer appearing on mobile browsers using AT&T cell service. Hooray!
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bradzehr
Tutor
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11 Messages
9 years ago
Great!!! I was informed yesterday that they have the solution and are starting on the west coast and working east. Hopefully we will see the fix in the east in the next few weeks. 🙂
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