Onshape is disconnected - refresh page

dan_engerer

"Onshape is disconnected. Your work is saved. Refresh the page, etc. etc."

Hi. I get this message usually about 10 or so times a day both at home and at work. Every other web-based application I use works perfectly as far as I can tell. 
Happens especially frequently in front of customers, who then invariably make a comment about the wisdom of using cloud-based CAD. 

Anyone else get this all the time? 

1: y tho? 
2: Can we expect a fix in the near future? 

owen_sparks

Saw perhaps 6 times a year or so ago, nothing since.  (UK based.)  Similar deal on a persistent "wait a moment" notification.  Rock solid since then, but then again I don't show customers anything...

O.S.

Don_Van_Zile

I saw this error for the first time yesterday morning and couldn't login until after waiting about 10 minutes.

john_rousseau

Hi @dan_engerer. We have put a lot of time into tracing these issues down. You are not the first person to report this. Almost 100% of the time it's a problem with a piece of networking equipment near you. I know that's not a great answer to hear from us, but it's rarely caused by a disconnect by our servers.

Onshape uses secure WebSockets while you are modeling (or working on a drawing) to provide a persistent connection to our servers. This allows us to "push" information to you like model updates, collaboration events, etc. without having your browser initiate the operation. Very few other web applications do this. They are more "request and response" based. This is why you don't see network flakiness nearly as much with other applications.

We have the metrics to know that this problem impacts a very small % of our customers, but impacts that group frequently. The server side diagnostics say that the client disconnected and the client side diagnostics say that the server disconnected which basically means that the problem is in the middle somewhere. By looking at the metrics over a large population of users, we can see that it's usually local to the impacted users.

We are looking into ways to have the client automatically reconnect, but it's hard to make that experience "invisible" and even harder to make it so that we don't "lose" a modeling operation in the middle of the reconnect.

What's common about your work and home environments in terms of networking? Any patterns around documents, types of operations, times of day? Are you using the same machine at home and at work? Any chance your machine it switching between wireless networks (or between wired and wireless)?

Sorry for the hassle. I really would like to solve this problem. It's usually just not in areas that we have control over.

john_rousseau

@Don_Van_Zile: The problem yesterday morning was related to a partial outage we had and not related to the problem that Dan is talking about. See https://status.onshape.com/history

dan_engerer

Thanks very much for the detailed response, John. I understand the challenge. What is common between my work and home is not much. Different ISPs, different computers, different locations. 

robert_morris

It's likely your modem.

We went through this here at work for a while. We had no issues for 2 years, then Comcast gave us a new modem after our old one died, and from then on we were constantly getting disconnected throughout the day (10-20 times a day). We also started having the same issue with another cloud service we use, and we found other people online with similar problems with the same model of modem.

After a lot of back and forth arguments and threats with Comcast as well as network tests on our end, we finally convinced them to come out and install a different brand modem. Since this new modem has been installed, we haven't had any more issues.

The modem we were using that had the issues was a Cisco DPC3941B modem from Comcast/Xfinity Business. The new modem that's working fine is a Netgear CG3000DCR modem.

Hope that helps, or at least gives you a place to start looking.

[EDIT] added the modem model numbers.

dan_engerer

Thank you Robert! I bet that's it! 

Nickolas_Lockard

Same problem. My work is at a standstill because OS crashes about every 5-10 minutes. I will have to abandon Onshape if I can not get it working. I am using a Netgear Orbi RBK50, 2-node, wireless mesh network. My connection is rock-solid and nothing else crashes. Not netflix on the TV, not other apps, not youtube--only Onshape.

Are there better settings I can try? I just invested a lot of money in this mesh network and can't just keep throwing money at a problem for no good reason.

john_rousseau

Hi @nick_lockard. Please take a look at your local network setup. Do you have a router that's sick? 

We are not seeing any problems on our server side.

3dcad

All the tubes etc. can easily take say 10 sec network outage since they can use buffer to play while without connection. For Onshape it's not that easy to predict user actions to create a buffer

matthew_stacy

I frequently get prompted to refresh my browser <F5> and then find that Onshape has me in the document as a second user.  The result is that I can't edit the document because I (the other me?) is already editing the document.

Logging out  and back in does not seem to resolve the document ownership conflict.  Seems like I have to wait for a timer on the Onshape server.  Is there a way for me to manually reset when this occurs?

Very frustrating.

Regards,

-Matt

NeilCooke

@matthew_stacy frequent disconnects are usually due to the quality of your connection.  If it drops out even for a second, it’s likely that Onshape will disconnect. You will see yourself as a second user in the doc because Onshape thinks your previous session is still connected but you should be able to carry on editing no problem. 

billy2

@matthew_stacy I hit shift-cmd-R about once a day for large data sets. The shift reload clears local cache and cleans up chrome.

It doesn't bother me because I don't lose anything. I typically go do something else when it's reloading. It's usually done reloading when I come back. I mean I'll have another Onshape tab open and work there for a few minutes. Remember you can multiple tabs open working on different parts of the design. Me I usually have 3 designs going at any one time. I never wait for anything to happen.

I never reboot my computer and never shut chrome down. This probably isn't a good thing. I work on large assemblies and large data sets without any issues.

Remember this isn't a desktop where you only have one instance running. 

I've gotten work done flying across the country on an airplane. That has to be the worse internet on the planet yet I was able to get things done.

It's hard for me to work on a single desktop thread and feel it drags me down.

Hope you get it up and running...

AuroraRon

I have this a dozen times a day but not using Onshape all day. 
Right now, its making Onshape unusable for me. I've tried different computers and different locations. 
I don't see any connectivity issues at all, We use VOIP phones and there is no loss of internet here at work or home. 

NeilCooke

@AuroraRon have you contacted the support team?

john_rousseau

@AuroraRon yes, please contact support. This is not behavior commonly seen by our users. Looking at the logs for your user ID, I can see the frequent disconnects. These are not being initiated by our server side, so there is something in your environment that is causing this.

AuroraRon

Yes, I have, thanks.   It happens every day, but today it has been unusable for me.  
I just switched to using tethering to my phone and using it for internet connectivity, and it's been fine for the last five minutes.
Don't notice any other programs or services we use; drop a connection like Onshape.    Just seems like there could be some software workaround to stop this from happening so often.