Garbled Images

[ElectricStorm]

I've already contacted Bluehosts support about this several times, and they can't help me- I'm here as a last ditch idea, just in case anyone else has a solution to this very weird problem!

So for a number of months now I've noticed some of the images on my sites sometimes download in a garbled form- sometimes they're fine, but every now and then I'll get something that looks like this:

http://i4.tinypic.com/8eiiyj4.jpg

If you want to try and recreate it, the site it's most obvious on is http://www.stephensphoto.co.uk

Things I've definitely ruled out are as follows:
The images aren't dynamically created, they actually exist, therefore it's not a php screw up.
The images have been uploaded correctly and they're not scrambled on the server (demonstrated by the fact that they actually download fine some of the time)
It's not due to my browser, OS or computer (have recreated in several browsers, and on several different computers)

Bluehost suggested packet loss as the likely cause. They noticed I have a fairly slow tracert, and thats my ISPs fault, however I've had other people (including a few in America) recreate the problem and send me screenshots. Obviously they have a different ISP, and an entirely different tracert. Again Bluehost suggested their tracert is slow, and thats most likely the problem.

What neither I nor they can explain about this theory though, is why I don't see this issue on every Bluehost hosted website. I have several friends hosted with this company, and their images show up fine for me, despite many attempts to get them to scramble.

I eventually asked to move servers, hoping the change of IP might change my tracert, but this hasn't fixed the problem. I can't change ISPs (year contract) and I'm also painfully aware that this won't fix the problem for the other people that can see it, so isn't a good solution. In fact I'm out of ideas- short of changing hosts, which will be a shame, I'm utterly stuck. If any technical-minded people have any other theories or thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for reading.

[Early Out]

Tough to figure out what's wrong - your pages come up very quickly for me (East Coast of the U.S.), with no garbling at all.

Unrelated, however, I noticed a little menu glitch that shows up in both IE7 and Firefox. In the attached screenshot, notice the text entries for "Products" and "Urban World." Something is overwriting them - it clears up if you hover over the "Phillipa" entry just above those two.

[ElectricStorm]

Oh yea, I need to fix that- I set it up so the owner could set their own gallery names, but forgot to set a character limit for what displays on those menus. It's nothing to do with the image problem though.

Yea it comes up fast for me too, which is also strange isn't it? You'd think with a tracert so slow it's responsible for data being lost I'd have all sorts of problems with speed / pages not loading, but I never seem to.

[Basil]

Do you have a router?

[ElectricStorm]

Yea.. A BT Home Hub... piece of c**p that it is. Don't get me wrong I'd be the first to blame my ISP.. if I was the only one able to see the problem. BTs shortcomings can't possibly be responsible for the problem showing up in America though, since they are British Telecom!

[Basil]

You still get the problem if you bypass the router?

I'd have a hard time believing that bluehost is causing this, it's possible that images are becoming corrupted when you upload them (obviously not to the point where they aren't displayable, but it could be enough to mess them up in certain conditions), could you possibly save one of these garbled images to a file and link to it?

[felgall]

It is displaying okay for me. Until someone is able to replicate the problem it is going to be difficult to even start on figuring out what is causing it.

[ElectricStorm]

I'm not sure about how I'd bypass the router, since I kind of need it to get online?

Sure I can save the image, you mean in a text file?

http://www.total-anarchy.com/temp/mainphoto.txt

Original Image at http://www.stephensphoto.co.uk/grafix/mainphoto.jpg (http://www.stephensphoto.co.uk/grafix/mainphoto.jpg)

Yea, tell me about it. Although a few other people have been able to see it so I'm fairly sure it's not entirely personal, most of the people I've asked for help just can't replicate it, including Bluehost themselves. :(

[Basil]

I take it your router and modem are one unit then. Are you connecting to it via CAT cable or USB, or something else?

I looked at the file and compared it to the image on the server, your file is not only missing information, it's about 200 bytes shorter than the one on the server.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/3872/mainphotozy2.gif
(Those 00s are like holes in your file)

What does that tell me? Well, unfortunately not a whole lot about how it's losing the data.

If I had to guess it would be that the connection to the server is being reset, although without knowing how frequently this occurs it would be hard to say why this is happening.

It's only happening on your bluehost site? No other websites are exhibiting this behavior under the same conditions?

There really is no way for anybody else to test this without setting up a proxy on your machine and having them connect through it.

[ElectricStorm]

Yea, it's a Broadband router, it's how I connect to the internet. On this machine I connect via wireless, but other computers in the house are connected via an ethernet cable, and I've replicated it on different machines. My current set up is like this:

BtHomeHub (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Home_Hub) -> NetGear Router (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/88488) -> Several wired computers & one wireless.

The NetGear router is to extend the wireless range, and allow me to share the internet connection between all the other computers in the house (The Home Hub only has 2 ports). The BT Home Hub is because it's part of a deal where we get free evening phone calls etc.

That comparison is really interesting, what program are you using to turn it into numbers like that?

Yes this is only happening on my Bluehost hosted sites. It's why it's so frustrating! If I could see it all over the internet, or on files I'd hosted on TinyPic / Photobucket / other web hosts I'd be murdering my ISP right now, but I don't. It's entirely exclusive to Bluehost. I've experimented a lot, and I can't replicate it anywhere else at all.

Someone suggested I take apart my current set up and just try connecting to the internet via a modem, which I'll try later on. I'll let you know how it goes!

[Basil]

That comparison is really interesting, what program are you using to turn it into numbers like that?
It's a hex editor, doesn't get much use any more.

[gettblueinfo]

Did you ever figure out your bluehost problem? I suspect that it's the router. I also have a netgear router and I'm experiencing the same exact error with all of my bluehost pages. Some images load OK, some are garbled. Ones that come out garbled can often be fixed if I clear my browser cache then reload them from the server. Images look great on other net connections outside of my home and all other websites other than Bluehost look fine inside my home. I've got a Netgear WGR614.

[Early Out]

Same basic advice - try bypassing the router, and see what happens. Connect your PC directly to your cable modem (you may have to powercycle the modem when changing the device connected to it, so that it will hand out an IP address to the PC).