ASP.NET MVC pages not served over 3G or specific proxies

Question

We are just pushing a new ASP.NET MVC-based web application that works great on all desktop connections and all mobile devices like iPhone, etc. However, when certain pages are viewed through a 3G connection (either through a 3G key on a laptop or directly on a mobile device), a blank white page is served without any content. It seems we returned an empty request.

In some proxied networks, we get a similar problem in which they say that the size of our request is too large. This approach makes sense, since it only affects certain pages, and I assume that mobile network providers use all kinds of proxies in their path.

However, I could not find any information about what would constitute a too large request. I have profiled one of the pages in question, here are some of the characteristics that I thought might make a difference:

HTML content size: 33.04KB compressed, 50.65KB uncompressed
Total size of all stylesheets (4 files): 32.39KB compressed, 181.65KB uncompressed
Total size of all external JS (24 files): 227.82 KB compressed, no compression 851.46 KB

For me, the compressed size of the content is not excessive, but maybe I'm wrong. Can anyone advise what I can do to solve this problem, since it is very difficult for me to find any specific information about this.

Answer 1

We really solved this problem, and this was due to the size and number of Set-Cookie elements in the response header. We found that we had an error in which there were about 100 Set-Cookie elements in the header. Resolving this error and reducing the size of the values ​​fixed the problem

Answer 2

As for MVC, 3G networks are no different from Wi-Fi. However, there is a limit on the size of files that mobile devices can cache. In this case, these files will be requested from the server with each writeback.

Since some pages work, I think it is a good idea to isolate the problem to a specific point of failure than to look in the wild.

You can debug problems using the 3G dongle and firebug in the Firefox or Chrome developer tools.

• Make sure there are no Java Script errors, firstly, what causes the problem.
• Confirm that the Javascript / css / html files are indeed delivered to the client. (Firebug on the client). On the server, check the IIS or MS Network Monitor logs or create an http proxy server where you can monitor traffic. Try it at your convenience.
• You have almost 30 requests only for css / java script / html, and the number may be higher if you have images. The completion of all these requests can go on forever in 3G. Try combining Java Script files and reduce the number of queries. Browsers have a limit on the number of simultaneous requests that they can make, adding to them all the time (Firefox, I believe, can make about 10 simultaneous requests).