John

To set the context.

Disconnect your Internet connection.
Open your Xara application and try to access the on-line content.
Your Local Designs gallery should open and be flagged as offline.

Reconnect your Internet connection.
Open an item in Local Designs gallery.
Xara tries to set up a link to its on-line content site.
If it succeeds, the offline flag disappears.

If a user's Internet is broken in a way that the application is getting partial responses, the application has no real way other than asking again and again.
A stack of connections and requests are probably building up and overwhelming your PC. MS didn't then pop up and say it had problems so why should your Xara application?

There possibly could be a better interrogation of HTML responses that could be trapped through a transaction service, or try & catch routines.
For Xara to think of a test case of "Incorrect MTU Setting" is a little beyond the pale.
They might do so now that they have a real scenario to play to.

Acorn