Question

I need to connect to a host, if it’s off-line I get a TCP timeout (and it’s ok), and if it’s online with SSL available, I proceed to the logon phase.

The problem is, when the server is online, accepts connection on the configured TCP port, but then doesn’t answer to SSL handshake, our application waits indefinitely for an answer.

I’m using IBM HACL (c++) wrapped by JNI to access the server.

How could I test (in Java or C++ under Windows XP) the availability of SSL on the server side? Can I start a handshake manually, get the first server response, and then close the TCP socket? Or do I need to complete the handshake (and how do I?)

Thanks.

Answer 1

try {
    SSLContext ctx = SSLContext.getDefault();
    ctx.getClientSessionContext().setSessionTimeout(5); // in seconds
    SSLSocket socket = (SSLSocket) 
         ctx.getSocketFactory().createSocket("host.com", 443);

    socket.setSoTimeout(5000); // in millis
    socket.startHandshake();
} catch (IOException ex) {
    sslAvailable = false;
}

As per your comment the socket.setSoTimeout(5000) did the trick.

If that doesn’t work, then:

URLConnection urlConn = // obtain connection
urlConn.setConnectTimeout(5000); // in millis