Timeout error stupidity

I'm having problems with OS X software timing-out after trying to resolve an address for only a few seconds. When I am on a slow connection and am downloading one thing or more, the software is useless because it won't wait for bandwidth before claiming that there is no connection or that the server doesn't exist. For example, I am downloading my e-mail on a slow connection. At the same time, I tell the Mozilla browser to load apple.com, and then I go back to the mail window. Several seconds later, usually seven seconds, the browser window pops up and covers the e-mail window I was reading, only to display a useless error message:

"apple.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again."
[OK]

Why can't the software try again, preferably without saying anything? It could at least display a message in the status bar without interrupting work in other windows. The mail and newsgroups client will often have timeout problems related to low bandwidth, too.

"<News server> could not be found. Please check the name and try again."
[OK]
"Failed to connect to server <News server>."
[OK]
"<Mail server> could not be found. Please check the name and try again."
[OK]

Mozilla will often begin loading a bulky page (with links to third-party servers like 112.2o7.net and hitbox.com) when it has another one of its timeout issues:

"The document contains no data."
[OK]

Then the browser stalls with part of the page loaded. I have to reload the whole page again to get the rest of it. This is often followed by the error:

"<Server> could not be found. Please check the name and try again."
[OK]

This is very annoying and it wastes time. The software should keep waiting for bandwidth until it gets it, or the user should be able to set the timeout period and the number of retries desired before the software stops trying to reach a server. There appear to be two problems:

Software programmers assume that everyone has a high-speed connection which is never busy, and so they put useless error messages in the software instead of making the software able to ignore connection problems.

OS X seems to be causing most of the timeout issue. In Linux, Windows, and various other Unix operating systems, Mozilla and most of the other network software has no timeout problems. But on OS X, they all have the same problem.


While downloading one file at a slow 2 KB/sec, there is enough bandwidth for other applications, but:

AOL:

"The domain name server lookup for the specified host has failed. The host is unknown."

iChat:

"Could not connect to AIM The specified host cannot be located."

iTMS:

"Could not purchase the items in your cart. An unknown error occurred (-9806). There was an error in the Music Store. Please try again later."

MSIE:

"The specified server could not be found."

Opera:

"Could not locate remote server <Server>"

QuickTime:

"Couldn't open the file <File> because the Internet host was not found."

Real Player:

"Unable to locate server. This server does not have a DNS entry. Please check the server name in the URL and try again."

Safari:

"Safari can't find the server. Safari can't open the page <URL> because it can't find the server <Server>".

Software Update:

"Software Update can't connect to the update server. Make sure you can connect to the Internet, then try again."


While OS X applications were popping up with all these complaints about failing to find a connection, I went into Netscape Communicator through Classic OS 9 and had no problems accessing any remote servers. Applications running under other operating systems also had no problems using the available network bandwidth while OS X insisted that there was no network.

There's something in OS X that is causing this problem.

It looks like Apple has finally fixed the timeout issue with the OS 10.3.7 update.

Here is the DNS timeout problem in Mozilla:

In appstrings.properties:
"dnsNotFound=%S could not be found. Please check the name and try again."

In nsDocShell.cpp:
{
else if (NS_ERROR_UNKNOWN_HOST == aError) {
NS_ENSURE_ARG_POINTER(aURI);
// Get the host
nsCAutoString host;
aURI->GetHost(host);
CopyUTF8toUTF16(host, formatStrs[0]);
formatStrCount = 1;
error.Assign(NS_LITERAL_STRING("dnsNotFound"));


// Display the error as a page or an alert prompt
NS_ENSURE_FALSE(messageStr.IsEmpty(), NS_ERROR_FAILURE);
if (mUseErrorPages) {
// Display an error page
LoadErrorPage(aURI, aURL, error.get(), messageStr.get());
}
else
{
// Display a message box
prompter->Alert(nsnull, messageStr.get());
}
}