Troubleshooting & Diagnosing Network Issues

If you're struggling to perform everyday tasks in PhotoShelter, or if you're unable to load, browse or search the Library or Portal, it's possible there are network issues at play.

Network issues may appear as laggy load times for file thumbnails, a delay in search results appearing, or general latency when navigating through the Library and Portal. 

Here, we cover the steps you should take to:

• Clear Your Browser Cache
• Take a Speed Test
• Disconnect Your VPN
• Inspect Your Network Activity

Clear Your Browser Cache

As a first step, we recommend clearing your browser's cache and resetting your connection.  

In Chrome:

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, click More > Clear browsing data.
3. Select a time range, like Last hour or All time.
4. Select the types of information you want to remove.
5. Click Clear data.

In Firefox

1. Click the menu button  to open the menu panel.
2. Click History and select Clear Recent History.
3. Next to Time range to clear, choose Everything from the drop-down menu.
4. Select Cache in the items list, and make sure other items you want to keep are not selected.
5. Click Clear Now.

In Safari:

1. Select Safari > Preferences.
2. Click the Advanced tab and check the box next to Show Develop menu in menu bar.
3. From the menu bar, select Develop > Empty Caches.

Take a Speed Test

One of the first steps our Support team will ask you to take in resolving network issues is to take our speed test. This test determines the strength of your connection directly to the PhotoShelter servers while also indicating which of our CDN nodes you're being routed through. 

To take our speed test:

1. Navigate to our speed test here. The test will begin automatically.
2. Once all three server tests complete, send our support team a screenshot of your results. 

Disconnect Your VPN

If you're running into issues connecting to PhotoShelter and you use a VPN managed by your organization, we recommend disconnecting from the VPN and refreshing the page. This can help determine if there are firewall issues at play. 

If you're finding that PhotoShelter runs slowly or that you can't connect to PhotoShelter while on a VPN managed by an IT team, let your IT team know!

Inspect Network Activity

The most helpful tell-all is the Network tab within DevTools. This tab allows you to see and analyze the network requests that make up each individual page load on PhotoShelter. Our team uses this tab to investigate the causes of slow pages and identify performance bugs.

We'll often ask for you to take a screenshot of this tab to help us better diagnose the experience you're having. Please note that the instructions below are specific to Chrome, but should still be helpful if you're using Firefox or Safari (we suggest visiting your preferred browser's support center for specific tutorials on using their DevTools).

Open the Network Tab

1. In Chrome, open DevTools by pressing Control+Shift+J (Windows) or Command+Option+J (macOS). The Console panel opens.
2. Click the Network tab. You'll notice that the Network panel is empty. That's because DevTools only logs network activity while it's open. To see activity in that panel, refresh the page in your browser.

Log Network Activity

Each row of the Network Log represents a resource. By default, resources appear chronologically. The top resource in the panel is the first resource request, and the bottom resource is whatever was requested last.

When you refresh the page in your browser, you'll see activity in the Network panel:

Once requests have stopped or slowed down, sort the Status column in descending order. This should group all 404 and other error requests at the top of the panel:

At this point, you should:

1. Take screenshots of any errors you see (indicated in red)
2. Take screenshots of the Headers and Responses for each error (see below)

Inspecting Headers and Responses

Understanding the headers and response of a request, especially a request that's erroring, is most helpful. To see Headers and its corresponding Response, make sure your Network tab is open and sort the Status column in the Network tab so that anything with a 404 error appears at the top of the list.

To inspect a resource's Headers and Response:

1. Click the resource in the Name column
2. In the Inspector panel that appears, note the Headers and Response tabs:
   
3. Click on Headers and take a screenshot of what you see:
   
   
4. Click on Response and take a screenshot of what you see:
   
   
5. Repeat for any other errors in the Network tab.

Tip: You can also record your screen while going through these diagnostic steps and send our Support team your recording. The more details, the better!