xb Browser cannot ever connect, why?

Whenever I load Xb Browser, it never connects to any website, all I get is this message:

The connection has timed out

Any help please?

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

I get this a lot too.

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

It's so buggy on my Vista I removed it. And even the uninstall doesn't remove everything Had to manually remove folders and files even after the uninstall.

Too buggy on my Vista, didn't work well at all, in fact, it didn't work full stop.

But obviously it works well for others, so maybe it's just temperamental on my personal PC.

Any alternatives?

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

The problem you are getting is that you are using the free and painfully slow Tor network. That is 100% of the issue. Try the $1 upgrade to the XeroBank network and you'll be doing broadband speed low-latency anonymity.

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

So it's common for Tor users to have such slow speeds that nothing loads?

If that is so, why is Tor still being used if nobody can access anything using it?

But I assume some people are able to use it successfully? What are the determining factors in that?

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

Tor's usability will always reach that poor equilibrium. Free service means everyone will hog it up till nothing is left, no matter how big tor gets.

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

while this is true for various definitions of "slow" there are a few reasons why Tor in particular is slower than it should be. a recent paper discussing this very subject is at https://www.torproject.org/press/presskit/2009-03-11-performance.pdf

there are six main reasons listed and mitigation under development.

to get back to the core concern about freeloading on a free resource, bittorrent is a great example of how this isn't a matter of free or non free but a problem relating to incentives and fairness. there is no reason a large, decentralized, free anonymity network could not also be fast. it is just extraordinarily difficult!

and even if such a network did exist, there are concerns related to trust that a decentralized network will have even more difficulty addressing. there is a paper on this subject called "The Faithless Endpoint" at http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/article-896.pdf

#include <std_disclaimer.h>
My work on Tor means i'm not an unbiased party in these discussions

best regards,

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

nothing loading at all sounds like a timeout or configuration problem; it might be worthwhile to try reinstalling the software to see if something got corrupted and is causing problems.

you may also have some success using Polipo to improve http performance; its pipe lining and caching can improve things.

last but not least, as Steve mentioned it will always be "slow", but even then it should eventually get you content. the degree of slowness depends a great deal on what you're doing, how loaded the network is, which relays are in your circuits (particularly entry guards), and so on.

good luck!

best regards,

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

coderman is right again. however, xb browser already has the http pipelining via the browser, and it has timeouts set to request only "fast" circuits (as per kyle).

The way that xB Browser works is that it queries the control port and asks how many circuits it has. It won't even open the browser until you have 4+ circuits. So I put the issue back on the network.

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

i forgot there is no proxy in the middle for xB Browser; Polipo won't be of much help then with browser's pipelining on.

thanks for the info Steve, now i know!
(i remember xB waiting for 100% bootstrap now that i think about it...

best regards,

 

Re: xb Browser cannot ever connnect, why?

Right now I am using the Tor network, currently using XP SP1 in my old P4 3 GHz. I haven't tested on XP SP3 or Vista yet. But I would never recommend that you use Tor unless you have at least 1.000 kbp/s or faster broadband speed (at least 2 MB/s is recommended), and no less than 300 kbp/s from upload speed.

Of course if you are trying to use xB + Tor, eMule/Torrent and other things at the same time, you can forget about it. Unless you have a very fast connection and can spare enough bandwith to use Tor...

Honestly, I've been using Tor for quite some time and I feel it's impossible to do a normal browsing. The reason is not only because it's slower - the frequent timeouts are messing everything, the system is not stable enough to be used in large scale.