Sporadic Web Service Timeout

[Sabran]

Hi all -

I'm in the midst of developing an intranet application using the 1.1
..NET Framework. All of the development is being done in VS.NET 2003 on
Win2k3 boxes using VB.NET. Within certain parts of the application I
make use of Hosted Windows Forms (HWF). These HWFs need to make very
lightweight web service calls to pull down some relevant data.

I have a testing environment set up that hosts the application on
Win2k3 boxes. When I access this application through any of our
development machines (also Win2k3), everything works flawlessly. When I
try to access the application through our testing machines (Windows XP
Pro), it's a different story. I'm noticing sporadic timeout errors.
I've messed around with it for a few hours, but I haven't been able to
determine how to consistently produce this error. It seems sporadic,
and only on our WinXP Pro boxes.

Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? I'm having a
lot of difficulty figuring this out.

 

[Sabran]

I dug into the IIS log on the web server, and it doesn't look as if the
server actually receives a request from the XP box when I get this
timeout. It's as if the XP box is trying to reuse a thread that has
already timed out on its end, so the request never leaves the machine.
I don't have a lot of experience with networking, so that's just a
guess.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this
a bit better?

Thanks,
- Keith

 

[Sabran]

I'm still at a loss about this issue, but I definitly need a
resolution. Would someone out there be able to provide another message
board where I might be able to get help?

Thanks!
- Keith

 

[m.posseth]

create the webservice object on every call ( challenge response scenario ) i
have seen manny people setting one time a refernce during startup of there
app and then polling the webservice methods every time and run in to
severall strange errors ( same happens with the webclient object )

so my Tip is declare the webservice object type and then in your methods
create them use them and dispose them , with this aproach you should be safe

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

 

[Sabran]

Thanks for your response, Michel. We are already following your advice.
Every time we make a webservice call, we are instantiating of the web
service. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks

- Keith

 

[m.posseth]

well another tip is that you might enable the cache attribute in your
webservice method

like this
<WebMethod(MessageName:="altnameofwebmethod", CacheDuration:=600)> _

Public Function fblnMethod(ByVal testparam As Integer) As Boolean

'dummy method

End Function



if a parameter thrown in the method always returns the same data , and this
service is called frequently this will give you a hughe performance boost

regards



Michel posseth [MCP]

 

[Sabran]

Thanks for the tip, Michel. I will look into seeing if that will help
with performance in general. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help with
the timeout errors we're receiving. Since it's isolated to that one
machine, I'm wondering whether or not it has to do with network
connectivity or something of the sort.

 

[m.posseth]

You wouldn`t be the first strugling to get a problem solved in his software
, and later turns out it is a problem with the hardware

so if it is isolated to this one machine ,,, i would sure first check the
overall network connectivity ,,, i had in the past some problems with cheap
network cards so i swear with 3com cards ( one time with a SMC card it
worked perfect untill i moved large amounts off data ,, and the connection
was just once in a while broken , changed the card and the problem never
occured )


regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

 

[Sabran]

I think I'm going to try swapping out the network card later this week.
I'll post whether or not that solved the issue.