Question

Specific site access issues with Java Runtime 6 through proxy

Java, Desktops, Proxy servers, DNS

I am a contractor new to this particular company. One of the departments in my production environment requires JRE to access a specific financial website through our proxy server. With 17 of 19 clients (WinXP SP2 fully patched), access is OK - no issues. With 2 of 19, the financial website (internal bank website) cannot be accessed: the required Java applet attempts to load, stalls, re-tries and eventually times out.

We are running through a proxy server located overseas. When the proxy NAME is specified in the Java control panel, the site cannot be contacted at all. When the proxy IP address is specified, the two clients can connect, but the applet times out, as described above.

We have uninstalled Java and re-installed without a solution. After a successfull Java installation, we can verify operation from the Sun website (the "dancing java dude" is loaded).

I have suggested two possible options to the house techs:
1. try to downrev the Java installation to JRE 4 or JRE 5
2. Flush and re-register DNS

Has anyone seen this issue before and if so, how did you resolve it? Any/all comments are welcome...

If I understand it correctly, 17 out of 19 don't have a problem.

First make sure you have the latest IE/OS patches

Make sure you've set up the jre proxy correctly here

Next determine where your jvm is trying to connect use "netstat -vb"

Some IE versions don't pass their proxy info back to the OS properly. If you notice the java.exe trying to connect to the website directly, instead of the proxy, try to force it via the "proxycfg" command. First type just "proxycfg" to see if there is anything there. If there is, do a "proxycfg -d" to delete. If not, do "proxycfg -u" to copy IE's settings or " proxycfg -p <proxy-server-name>" to add it manually

If none of the above work, you can download the JDK with debugging tools on one of the machines and use it to see what exactly is failing.

Hope this helps.