title: Selenium WebDriver: Firefox starts, but does not open the URL
body: <p>I've just installed Selenium for the first time, and I'm having trouble to get started.</p>
  
  <p>Installation went fine with <code>pip</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>pip install selenium
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I can <code>import selenium</code> within Python.</p>
  
  <p>Now I'm trying to run the following sample script:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from selenium import webdriver
  driver = webdriver.Firefox()
  driver.get("http://www.python.org")
  assert "Python" in driver.title
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What happens is that Firefox opens, but it does not navigate to "<a href="http://www.python.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.python.org</a>" (similar to the behaviour described <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14603478/firefox-wont-drive-with-selenium-webdriver">in this question</a> - it only shows a blank page)</p>
  
  <p>For about 60 seconds nothing happens, until the following exception raised:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "selenium-test.py", line 4, in &lt;module&gt;
      driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    File "/home/usr1/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py", line 61, in __init__
      desired_capabilities=capabilities)
    File "/home/usr1/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 72, in __init__
      self.start_session(desired_capabilities, browser_profile)
    File "/home/usr1/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 114, in start_session
      'desiredCapabilities': desired_capabilities,
    File "/home/usr1/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 165, in execute
      self.error_handler.check_response(response)
    File "/home/usr1/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 136, in check_response
      raise exception_class(value)
  selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: u'&lt;HTML&gt;&lt;HEAD&gt;\r\n&lt;TITLE&gt;Network Error&lt;/TITLE&gt;\r\n&lt;/HEAD&gt;\r\n&lt;BODY&gt;\r\n&lt;FONT face="Helvetica"&gt;\r\n&lt;big&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/big&gt;&lt;BR&gt;\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;blockquote&gt;\r\n&lt;TABLE border=0 cellPadding=1 width="80%"&gt;\r\n&lt;TR&gt;&lt;TD&gt;\r\n&lt;FONT face="Helvetica"&gt;\r\n&lt;big&gt;Network Error (tcp_error)&lt;/big&gt;\r\n&lt;BR&gt;\r\n&lt;BR&gt;\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;\r\n&lt;TR&gt;&lt;TD&gt;\r\n&lt;FONT face="Helvetica"&gt;\r\nA communication error occurred: "Operation timed out"\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;\r\n&lt;TR&gt;&lt;TD&gt;\r\n&lt;FONT face="Helvetica"&gt;\r\nThe Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;\r\n&lt;TR&gt;&lt;TD&gt;\r\n&lt;FONT face="Helvetica" SIZE=2&gt;\r\n&lt;BR&gt;\r\nFor assistance, contact your network support team.\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;\r\n&lt;/TABLE&gt;\r\n&lt;/blockquote&gt;\r\n&lt;/FONT&gt;\r\n&lt;/BODY&gt;&lt;/HTML&gt;'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>These are the software versions </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Firefox ESR 17.0.5</li>
  <li>Selenium (Python bindings) 2.35.0 </li>
  <li>Python 2.6.6</li>
  <li>Red Had Linux 6.3</li>
  <li>the "Firefox WebDriver 2.35.0" browser extension is installed</li>
  </ul>