When a browser says that an http request is aborted what has actually happened?

Question

On some occasions an http request appears to be aborted by the browser. Using Firebug or something in the status column where it might normally say, for example, 200 OK it says "aborted" (in red). When this occurs in Internet Explorer the user may see an IE generated message "Internet Explorer cannot display this page".

What has happened here?

I don't think it is a timeout issue as this occurs in quite a short time frame and I believe that I can get a successful response (e.g. a 200) when the response takes longer.

And it isn't to do with the server; the request is aborted by the browser. It isn't that we have had a server error back. (E.g. 500).

Also; the same request (to the same URL with the same method) usually works. So it isn't something to do say with SSL being misconfigured.

I am assuming that this is something to do with internet connectivity. But I don't know enough about networking / the internet to know what that really means.

So. The specific question is; what cases could cause this error?

Answer 1

This can happen when the browser is using an outdated SSL/TLS version and requests a resource that requires a secure connection

Answer 2

This can happer when a post are fired during a get (for example during dowload of a image), or when some image tag have not a src

Answer 3

The server, your browser or any machine (or operating system) in between can drop the underlying TCP connection for any reason (timeouts, digging machines, intrusion detection).

You won't get a server error from those situations, because the server either didn't receive your request, it did but it took too long to process, or the server sent its (proper) response but it wasn't fully transmitted.