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I've got a web server running Windows Server 2008 R2, SP1, and IIS7.

It has been running fine for some time, but recently begun having difficulty with outbound HTTP.

Attempts to hit web pages from the server console using IE or firefox are incredibly slow - to the point that some sites will not load at all, and any downloads initiated will time out.

However, people who are accessing web pages on that machine are not noticing any latency. I can FTP data down to the machine at very good speed. Pinging sites gives me a seemingly normal response with no unusual latency.

I don't see any software that looks alarming, and no unusual services - so I don't think that the box is compromised.

I've watched Resource Monitor to see if there's unusual network activity, and it looks pretty normal.

The machine has been rebooted recently, which did not seem to impact the problem.

I do not believe it is a network firewall, as other machines in the same network do not seem to have this problem.

What can I use to try to pin down the problem? Thanks!

tl;dr: HTTP requests from the server to the outside world, like pulling up serverfault.com is incredibly slow.

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Is the issue the same if you try to access an internal website from the server (different server, same LAN)? Or does it only timeout when accessing external websites? Do outgoing connections using other protocols work correctly without timeouts (ping, FTP out from the server, etc.)? Do you have a firewall or proxy that might be restricting outbound traffic? –  jlehtinen Dec 9 '13 at 20:55

1 Answer 1

Its hard to tell what web server youre talking about when you say its slow and in the next sentence its fast. This question is not worded for easy dissemination of your environment or info or problem. Please provide more info.

I would hazard to say that if there is nothing funky looking on the box and other services then it would be a service issue.

I would run netstat -an to see active connections propagate when they are connecting. Look at the logs for the iis 7 instance.


If you have more info that would be helpful. Is the iis instance doing external communication as part of its services? Is it an issue with some pages or other pages are fine. Does a new instance of iis site work with downloads just fine. Those would be somethings to check.

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The OP is saying that websites hosted BY the server work correctly. When he is trying to browse websites FROM the server (i.e. at the console), then they timeout. –  jlehtinen Dec 9 '13 at 20:47
Hard to tell, rereading it i am not sure how you could gather that. –  user19039 Dec 9 '13 at 21:16

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