I have a VB6 WebClass application.  When users 1st come to the site (therefore having no Session) they are shown the Login page irrespective of the rest of the URL.

In the submission of that form, I try to contact Oracle with the provided credentials.  If Oracle responds, I put the credentials into the Session.

From then on, they have a Session associated with their use of the app, a Session with valid credentials.

But every so often, instead of receiving the requested page, they get the login screen again.

The box hosting the internet server is a Dell PowerEdge 1750 w/Dual 2.8 GHz CPUs & 2 Gb RAM.  I am suspecting that what happens is that the Session (technical term) associated with the users session (general description of what they’re doing) is also associated with only one of the processors, and that when that processor is not available, their request is serviced by a processor that has never heard of them.  (Or perhaps you could substitute “thread” for “processor” in that description...)

So the question I have is whether there is a well known mechanism whereby the user can get orphaned from their existing Session, given the hardware/software I described above?

Thoughts?
Resources?

Edit \/ \/

Additional piece of the puzzle.

Mark, at a building ½ Mi. away opened the web app, and I opened the web app.  (This app does not persist Oracle connections.  Each need for data initiates openeing a new connection, gettng the data, then closing the connection.)

He went back and forth between two pages repeatedly for about a ½ an hour.  He finally was sent back to the login screen.  At that point I requested a page from my instance, and I was given the login page instead.

So apparently, when one person loses their Session (and therefore their held credentials), everyone loses their Session at the same time.

Check out the section:

P2P Forum > ASP and ASP.NET > ASP.NET 1.0 and 1.1 Beginners > Session variables being lost!

Which discusses this in depth.

Actually this one is more up your alley I think:

P2P Forum > .NET > VS.NET 2002/2003 > Session Variables Randomly Disappear?

Wow! That was a rally interesting thread (all 7 pages of it). Apparently Session problems abound.

Unfortunately, it appears that everyone in that thread has just one Session fail. In my case all Sessions fail at the same time. Very perplexing (and vexing).

So the issue I’m facing remains unresolved.