[Patentcenter] MyUSPTO--Site can't be reached?

[Neil R. Ormos]

Catherine Van Houten via Patentcenter wrote:

> One of our paralegals is constantly having
> access issues with MyUSPTO, whether going
> through MyUSPTO or going to Patent Center
> directly. This is happening in Chrome, despite
> her restarting the computer, clearing caches and
> cookies, etc. etc. This is a multiple times
> DAILY occurrence for this one paralegal, like
> Groundhog Day.

> When she is finally able to access Patent Center
> and start uploading a filing, after clicking to
> go to the next screen, sometimes Patent Center
> drops off and the "can't be reached" screen will
> reappear without saving any of her work up to
> that point. When she finally gets back in, she
> has to start all over again. When she called the
> EBC, they said that the issue is on our end;
> they can't duplicate/replicate the issue; and
> they are not receiving similar complaints from
> anyone else.

> This paralegal is wasting tons of time dealing
> with this. And we are having to have other
> paralegals do the uploads that this paralegal is
> unable to do. Has anyone in this group been able
> to successfully resolve this issue? And/or,
> providing this input for whoever is keeping
> track of these performance issues.

Unless your post elicits widespread reports of DNS problems on the PTO side, it would make sense to try to rule out local DNS problems.

If only one person at your firm is getting NXDOMAIN errors, consistently or frequently, and others at the same location are able successfully to access the same PTO resources at the same times of day, the problem may be a network problem specific to that user, a configuration problem on that user's computer, a problem with a local DNS resolver on your firm's network, or your ISP's DNS resolver.  Particularly suspect is the DNS configuration on the user's computer.  For users working remotely via a VPN, misconfiguration of the VPN is a common source of DNS problems.

I could offer several ways to diagnose or fix the problem, but if your firm has IT support, they already know the tricks.