Student Finance website returning 302 - just me?

[Pickled Onion]

When I  try to press the "start now" button to log in to student finance england it returns to the www.gov.uk home page. It's done this for months now. Presumably this is not a universal issue but it affects everyone in this household.

Output from wget:
Jakes-Air:cowsay jake$ wget https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home
--2018-01-06 13:25:28--  https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home
Resolving www.student-finance.service.gov.uk... 62.255.142.228
Connecting to www.student-finance.service.gov.uk|62.255.142.228|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://www.gov.uk/ [following]
--2018-01-06 13:25:28--  https://www.gov.uk/
Resolving www.gov.uk... 151.101.16.144
Connecting to www.gov.uk|151.101.16.144|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 24866 (24K) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘home’

home                       100%[========================================>]  24.28K  --.-KB/s    in 0.02s   

2018-01-06 13:25:28 (1.52 MB/s) - ‘home’ saved [24866/24866]



Can anyone figure out what I'm doing wrong?

[Pickled Onion]

OK, easier question: can anyone else get to the page?

[Pingu]

Works OK for me.

ETA: in Opera

[mrcharly-YHT]

It is ok for me on Chrome.  Which browser are you using?

I suggest emptying your cache and trying a different browser.

[Pickled Onion]

I've tried emptying the cache, and tried in Chrome and Safari. The output from wget suggests it's not a browser issue which is why I'm confused.

[Pickled Onion]

I've just tried from work and it works. Could it be an ISP issue?

[Pickled Onion]

wget from work also returns 302 but the Location comes back as

 https://logon.slc.co.uk/cas/login?_locale=en_GB&service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.student-finance.service.gov.uk%2Fcustomer%2Fhome%2Fpages

Needless to say, this also doesn't work from home 

[mrcharly-YHT]

I've just tried this from work and it is fine for me.

https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home
This link opens the login page directly.

[Feanor]

The fact that you are able to resolve the name and establish an TCP connection, but it's failing to load data after a redirect to an HTTPS site has a whiff of a Path MTU issue.

Try dropping the MTU in your router as an experiment.

Have a read of this thread...
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=92992.0

[Pickled Onion]

You're probably right, unfortunately I am stuck with the ISP's router since my decent router was doused in a storm when a shallot left the window open. There's no option to change the MTU.

[Feanor]

I am stuck with the ISP's router

I'd probably deal with that issue first.

[Kim]

You're probably right, unfortunately I am stuck with the ISP's router since my decent router was doused in a storm when a shallot left the window open. There's no option to change the MTU.

You could change the MTU on your computer's network interface instead.

[Pickled Onion]

Thanks.

I have tried that with several different values and get the same results. The lowest I can set is 1280, either through preferences or bash.

[philip]

Using

  wget -S https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home

I see the first redirect is to

  https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/ (with a trailing slash)

then to

  https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/pages

and finally to

   https://logon.slc.co.uk/cas/login?_locale=en_GB&service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.student-finance.service.gov.uk%2Fcustomer%2Fhome%2Fpages

so it appears that in your case the first redirect is going wrong.  The server response that I see for that first redirect is

$ wget -S --max-redirect 1 https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home
--2018-01-13 10:42:25--  https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home
Resolving www.student-finance.service.gov.uk (www.student-finance.service.gov.uk)... 62.255.142.228
Connecting to www.student-finance.service.gov.uk (www.student-finance.service.gov.uk)|62.255.142.228|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
  HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
  Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2018 10:42:25 GMT
  Location: https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/
  Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
  Content-Length: 0
  Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
  Connection: Keep-Alive
  Content-Type: text/plain
  Set-Cookie: TS0168d594=0195716340b1a739a98fe56b570b6f8f4db22bae81078129523719344894fa8f61acb2bfa2; Path=/; Secure; HTTPOnly
Location: https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/ [following]
--2018-01-13 10:42:25--  https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/
Reusing existing connection to www.student-finance.service.gov.uk:443.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
  HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
  Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2018 10:42:25 GMT
  Cache-Control: no-store
  Pragma: no-cache
  X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
  Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=rWy3W-cVowh6CW7g+Ex7lu+N.d2lvapcppe01-b; Path=/customer/home; Secure; HttpOnly
  Location: https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/pages
  Content-Length: 0
  Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
  Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=99
  Connection: Keep-Alive
  Content-Type: text/plain
  Set-Cookie: TS0168d594=0195716340b1a739a98fe56b570b6f8f4db22bae81078129523719344894fa8f61acb2bfa2; Path=/; Secure; HTTPOnly
  Set-Cookie: TS012f42d3=01957163409667bcca84a1cca759656eba9cc0882156aabc03d6dc4ccd11108e4e072d7c12c3a9249fac615ff7441f7a616393a4d8; path=/customer/home; HTTPonly; Secure
Location: https://www.student-finance.service.gov.uk/customer/home/pages [following]
1 redirections exceeded.