For this particular scenario, the user is unable to navigate from PageA to PageB due to the compressDOM parameter being set to true in the web.xml. The FastInfoSet library has been included in the application and the following can be seen in the Firebug console and server logs:

1. Firebug + deployed on Glassfish V3

[window] the response does not contain XML data bridge.js.xhtml (line 1188)
[window] HTTP error [code: 500]: There was an error communicating with the server, status: 500

2. Firebug + deployed on Tomcat 6

isXMLResponse is not defined
[Break On This Error] broadcast(serverErrorL... isXMLResponse ? xmlContent : null]);

3. Server logs for both servers

java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.icefaces.impl.util.DOMUtils.compareNodes(DOMUtils.java:341)
at org.icefaces.impl.util.DOMUtils.nodeDiff(DOMUtils.java:318)
at org.icefaces.impl.util.DOMUtils.domDiff(DOMUtils.java:302)
........
[#|2011-01-12T12:15:09.815-0600|SEVERE|glassfish3.0.1|org.icefaces.impl.context.DOMResponseWriter|_ThreadID=26;_ThreadName=Thread-1;|Failed to restore old DOM
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.ByteArrayInputStream.<init>(ByteArrayInputStream.java:89)
........
etc..