Re: errors received

[Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy,

I have a few thoughts on this:

1) There's no way the SNI hostname can be sent if you can't connect.   
Here's an analogy:  Suppose you want to call a pizza delivery place and 
pay with your credit card.  You dial the phone number, and all it does 
is ring.  Nobody ever picks up the phone. Would you then say "why won't 
they take my credit card information?"  No, of course not, if you can't 
connect with them, you can't read off your credit card number.   The 
same is true in Internet communications.  If you can't connect, you 
can't send/receive anything, not even an SNI hostname.  (Or anything 
else for that matter.)

2) A timeout error is always generated by HTTPAPI.  The error you've 
cited means that it's sending a request to connect, and there is no 
response to that request.  Very similar (as in point 1) to calling a 
phone number and getting no answer.   It waits for X number of seconds 
(I think I have it set to 60 by default) and when there's no response in 
that time, it generates the timeout error.

How can HTTPAPI know the reason that it got no response?  It cannot.

It's possible that it sent the request, and firewall deliberately 
discarded the request, and that's why it never got a reply.  So, that is 
very possible, but there's no way it can detect that. (Unless, of 
course, the firewall sends back a message telling HTTPAPI why -- but 
that is an uncommon setup for firewalls, usually they just discard the 
network packets.)

It's also possible that there is misconfiguration somewhere that is 
causing packets to be routed incorrectly.  Again, there's no way for 
HTTPAPI to know this, all it knows is that it's not getting a response.

It's also possible that there's a faulty piece of hardware in the mix 
somewhere that is causing packets to be dropped.  Again, no way to 
detect this, etc.

And of course, the destination server you're trying to connect to may be 
offline, or too busy to handle all the requests it's getting, or various 
other things that it is not responding. Again, unless it sends a reply 
to HTTPAPI (which it obviously cannot do if it is offline) there's no 
way for HTTPAPI to know why.

What is really needed, therefore, is a human being to troubleshoot the 
situation.   Systematically test each piece of the connection, make sure 
they are all working properly, until you find the place where it's going 
wrong.


On 12/10/2015 11:42 AM, Andy Eickstadt wrote:
>     We are an ISV in Minnesota, using the Scott Klement code for
>     downloading eCRV information from the MN DOR website. We have 13 member
>     counties, we have the code loaded on all the members iSeries boxes, but
>     are experiencing an error with one member. When looking at the
>     `http_debug' file from the erroring member, the SNI hostname is never
>     being set, they are getting a `timeout occurred while trying to connect
>     to server'. Is there somewhere else I can look to determine where the
>     error may be generated from? Certificate store?, firewall? Router?
>
>       Please email me with any other information needed.

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