Operation timed out when attempting to contact rcm.amazon.com

I'm getting this error message fairly often when browsing SP nowadays. Is there some problem with the ads or am I the only one experiencing this?

I'm using Mozilla btw, any ideas?

Actually I've been having problems lately when I'm browsing the message boards. Sometimes they take a very long time to load and sometimes I even get blank blue screens with no writing on them.

I'm using Mozilla too, but no problems. Are you using the latest version, as I doubt this is a UBB-problem...?

sometimes I open a thread, then when I go back to the forum it doesn't have all the latest entries. I have to go back to the forum listing, then go back into that forum. It's no hassle but a bit weird.

Something is definitely up with the ads, but I haven't been able to determine whether this is a problem with Amazon or the ads script. I'll look around Amazon to see if anyone else has reported this problem.

Anything else mentioned in this thread is probably due to your ISP/Internet connections, not something on the SP side. Apart from the ads lagging, I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Just to chime in, I have noticed that sometimes when I hit the "back" button, it takes me to a message board screen from a week or so prior and I need to "refresh" in order to get the updated topics. I just figured it was something with my browser/computer.

That is most certainly an issue with caching on your computer, as no older versions of any pages are kept on the server... Anything here is always recent. If you see anything else, it's either an issue with your ISP delivering cached pages, or with your browser's caching.

I actually got some problems with the 'back' button too. When I read a thread and hit the 'back' button afterwards, all the topics which had a yellow icon in front of it are gone. And I don't mean the yellow icon is gone, the complete topics have disapeared. When I refresh they are there again. This happened a few times, of which the last time was a few days ago. I only noticed it in the Sorcerous Sundries and The Sensorium forum.

All I can tell you is to flush the cache regularly, and in your browser preferences have it set to look for new versions of pages every time you load a page. This could also be an issue with your ISP improperly caching pages. I've had this problem for a few weeks myself, but that was 2 years ago. If all else fails, and you're sure the fault is not on your end, call your ISP and describe the problem to them and give them the url of SP; they should be able to make sure cached pages are not served off it.

As for the previously discussed Amazon ads - I contacted Amazon and they know about the problem (so it's on their end) and are working on it. Why is it taking so long to fix it is anybody's guess.