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Received an Invalid Response

CapnOcapn
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

I'm trying to buy train tickets from thetrainline.com, but every time I try to find trains, I get this message. I've asked my friend who doesn't use mobile broadband to try, and he says the website works just fine.

What could be causing the problem? I'm assuming it is something to do with the dongle. 

2 REPLIES 2

Retired-James
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

Hi CapnOcapn,

 

I must admit that this is a strange on however, this issue will normally happen when the URL is timing out through the dongle or if the signal on the modem is dropping out.

 

Can I ask if you have a good 3G signal in the area?

Does the issue happen in other locations?

Does this happen with any other websites?

 

If you can let me know we will be able to look into this further for you.

 

James

As far as I can make out, "Received a invalid response" [sic] is a recurring intermittent problem on Vodafone's mobile broadband system. I used to get a whole lot of it 2-3 years ago, but fortunately for me I've rarely seen it in the past year. It seems to affect some sites more than others. I've never seen any actual admission it's a Voda fault, even less a fix for it. I suspect it's a caching issue and/or an incompatibility between Voda's web-proxies/cache and certain websites.

 

Try using https:// instead of http:// if the site supports it (secure http bypasses Voda's meddling proxies), but beyond that I'm not sure what the solution is.

 

Well actually, my overall workaround for such niggles is to have a cheap Orange mobile broadband dongle (£5/500MB/month) as a backup for the random sites which Vodafone fails with from time to time... it's a pain, but it's the pragmatic solution if you don't have wired broadband.

 

 

To be more positive, overall Vodafone's broadband been much more reliable overall for me in the past year or so than in the time before that. Plus, having upgraded my firmware and now my dongle, ping times have dropped to ~125ms (compare to 250ms with the old E220 modem and original firmware), downloads peak at 6Mbps at quiet times (2~3Mbps not usual in the later evening) and uploads go to 1Mbps. Yay!