Incomplete/halting downloads

My employer went to www.optigold.com & attempted to download 3 things (2 exe & 1
pdf), all of which failed. I transparently proxy all our modem connections
(including his) & have no other (apparent) problems apart from a weird gliche
with Netscape that several users have also reported. What happens is the
download starts quickly, gets to a certain point & hangs there. When I bypassed
our proxy (Squid 2.2STABLE4), it did the same thing only at a slower rate so I
am very sure that it isn't my proxy which is buggering things up (perhaps it is
a transparent proxy upstream). Let me put a finer point on it, Squid, thanks to
some brilliant people on this list, a lot of sweat by me & some very nerve
wracking times, absolutely screams in all other circumstances where it is
possible for it to do so (ie the other end is quick).

But this has prompted me to ask these questions:

Are there too many circumstances to easily describe what could cause a download
through a trans-proxy to fail where a direct would have worked? If not, is
there somewhere I can read about these or can someone post an answer to the
list?

If there are too many, what would be the most common causes?

Is it possible for a partial file to be held in cache (disk &/or memory) & what
kind of circumstances could lead to that?

Is it likely over a fairly reliable & quick connection that a file will become
corrupted as a consequence of having been run through Squid?

Regards to all,
Marc

(I changed my address from info@talent.com.au to better manage my mail for
anyone that knows me there)
Received on Fri Nov 05 1999 - 07:13:10 MST