Bizarre loss of session state

[Michael Carr]

I have created a website that responds to the following two domain names:

logintest.carr-engineering.com
logintest.onualumni.org

If you open either of these websites on their own, everything works fine.
However, if you open both of them simultaneously in two frames of a
frameset, wierdness ensues. To demonstrate this, open the following link:

http://logintest.onualumni.org/frametest.htm

Postback the top frame by clicking the button and everything is fine.
Postback the bottom frame and the SessionID changes every single time!
Strange, eh? (the postback handler for the button is a blank function)

Now, open the following link (both domains point to the same place):

http://logintest.carr-engineering.com/frametest.htm

THIS time if you postback the top frame you get a new SessionID every time,
but if you postback the bottom frame it works correctly. The ONLY thing that
has changed between these two tests is the domain name used for the overall
frameset.

If you open either of these sites in its own window, it works correctly.

This behavior is really killing one of my ASP.NET apps which resides in its
own frame as part of a larger frameset hosted on another domain. The
constantly changing SessionID means that nobody can log in...

Has anybody seen this before? Any ideas where to go next? Anybody else think
this is bizarre?

If you want the VisualStudio project files to try this for yourself, just
drop me an email and I'll send it to you.

Thanks!!
Michael Carr

 

[Michael Carr]

More information ...

I have verified that this bizarre behavior only occurs with Internet
Explorer. I tried Netscape 7.1 and did not observe the same thing occuring.

Also... after a while of testing this with IE, it suddenly stopped changing
the SessionID when I did a postback. After I rebooted my client machine,
however, it started doing it again. ...stranger and stranger!

Michael Carr