I guess, It can depends on which level load balancer operates. if load balancer is layer 4 (TCP) then for the operating system it looks like connection is made directly to the target application. In this case exception should happen during connect and be wrapped as ConnectTimeoutException but if load balancer is layer 7 (HTTP) then TCP connection is made to the load balancer (which possibly reads the whole request into memory) and then it's trying to establish another TCP connection to the target application and forward request there. While that happens, the client thinks that it already has sent the request to the target application and is already waiting for a response. In this situation SocketTimeoutException can happen.
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 6:23 PM Evan J <maps.this.addr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you for your response. > > I'm trying to understand your statement. Are you saying when connection > times out, SocketTimeoutException is thrown, and then the library captures > it and rethrows ConnectTimeoutException? > > Bottom line, first, is what I explained the expected behavior, and second, > how can we properly distinguish between these two types of timeouts? > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 4:24 AM Oleg Kalnichevski <ol...@apache.org> wrote: > > > On Mon, 2020-02-10 at 23:25 -0500, Evan J wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > (looks like I'd sent this to a wrong user group originally) > > > > > > We deploy an application B (which is basically a backend application > > > serving a web application) to a cluster of application servers (JBoss > > > EAP > > > 7.2 -- 8 instances). These instances send HTTP requests to a set of > > > gateway > > > applications, call them application Gs (10 instances), where the > > > requests > > > go through an F5 loadbalancer that sits between them. > > > > > > Instances of application B are Spring Boot applications (2.1.x) that > > > have > > > been configured with Apache HttpClient 4.5.5 and HttpCore 4.4.9. The > > > configuration is almost identical to this github code: > > > > > > > > > > > https://github.com/spring-framework-guru/sfg-blog-posts/tree/master/resttemplate/src/main/java/guru/springframework/resttemplate/config > > > > > > The only exception is that RestTemplateConfig#restTemplate() is > > > configured > > > by creation of RestTemplate and passing > > > HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory to its constructor rather than > > > using > > > Spring Boot's RestTemplateBuilder(). > > > > > > The keep alive configuration in application B is basically defined > > > something like: > > > > > > > > > > > https://github.com/spring-framework-guru/sfg-blog-posts/blob/0152fb0c4acf08d019128ca38c3dd2523871c43c/resttemplate/src/main/java/guru/springframework/resttemplate/config/ApacheHttpClientConfig.java#L52 > > > > > > When a load test is executed in a single stack environment where the > > > load > > > balancer is omitted (one application B -> one application G), the > > > requests > > > and responses are processed and validated accordingly (each request > > > should > > > correspond to a right response and be sent to the web application > > > front > > > end). > > > > > > However, when we run the same load test in a distributed environment > > > with a > > > load balancer between application B's and application G's, we see a > > > lot of > > > SocketTimeoutExceptions being logged, and we notice them very quickly > > > (about 5% of total of responses in application B throw that > > > exception). > > > > > > The code structure is very straightforward: > > > > > > try { > > > // RestTemplate call > > > } catch (RestClientException exception) { > > > Exception rootCause = ExceptionUtils.getRootCause(exception); // > > > Apache > > > Commons lib > > > if (rootCause != null) { > > > if > > > (SocketTimeoutException.getClass().getName().equals(rootCause.getClas > > > s().getName()) > > > { > > > // or even if (rootCause instanceof SocketTimeoutException) { > > > // Log for socket timeout > > > } > > > if > > > (ConnectTimeoutException.getClass().getName().equals(rootCause.getCla > > > ss().getName()) > > > { > > > // or even if (rootCause instanceof ConnectTimeoutException ) { > > > // Log for connection timeout > > > } > > > } > > > } > > > > > > Application B's keep alive has been set to 20 seconds while the > > > socket > > > timeout has been set to 10 seconds by default (connection timeout to > > > 1 > > > second). > > > > > > After placing timer to log how long it takes for an exception is > > > thrown, we > > > saw, the time that it took from the moment RestTemplate is invoked > > > till the > > > exception is thrown was slightly above 1 second, e.g. 1030 ms, 1045 > > > ms, > > > 1020 ms, etc.. This led us to increase the connection timeouts from 1 > > > second to 2 seconds, and afterward, we didn't get any timeout > > > exception of > > > any sort under the similar load. > > > > > > My question is, why is that the majority of exceptions that are being > > > thrown have SocketTimeoutExceptions type as opposed to > > > ConnectTimeoutExceptions which, based on the timeout adjustment > > > mentioned > > > above, appears to be the latter (Connect) vs. socket (read) timeout? > > > Note > > > that I said the majority of time, as I've seen a few > > > ConnectTimeoutExceptions as well, but almost 99% of the failed ones > > > are > > > SocketTimeoutExceptions. > > > > > > Also, in our logs, we log the "rootCause's" class name to avoid > > > ambiguity, > > > but as I mentioned, they are being logged as SocketTimeoutExceptions > > > class > > > names. > > > > > > What is Apache Components library doing under the hood that signals > > > the > > > underlying JDK code to throw SocketTimeoutExceptions rather than > > > ConnectTimeoutException > > > > Connection management code in HttpClient re-throws > > SocketTimeoutExceptions thrown while connecting a socket to its remote > > endpoint as ConnectTimeoutException to help distinguish connect timeout > > from socket (read operation) timeout. SocketTimeoutExceptions are > > always thrown by the JRE, not by HttpClient. > > > > Oleg > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: httpclient-users-unsubscr...@hc.apache.org > > For additional commands, e-mail: httpclient-users-h...@hc.apache.org > > > > >