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The request that is sent by the HttpWebRequest class may stop responding when you use the HttpWebRequest class in an ASP.NET application

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Article ID:904262
Last Review:May 21, 2007
Revision:1.4

SYMPTOMS

When you use the HttpWebRequest class in a Microsoft ASP.NET application, the request that is sent by the HttpWebRequest class may stop responding.

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CAUSE

This behavior may occur when the HttpWebRequest class and the HttpWebResponse class are used to make a HTTP or HTTPS request from an ASP.NET page and the ASP.NET page times out before the request is finished. When the ASP.NET page times out, the request is aborted. The aborted request may leave the connection that was initiated by the HttpWebRequest class in an unknown state and may cause the request to fail.

Note Managed code classes such as SOAP and remoting internally use the HttpWebRequest class. Therefore, managed code classes may exhibit the same behavior.

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WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, you must make sure that the ASP.NET time-out value is large enough to handle sending the request with the HttpWebRequest.GetResponse method and reading the response stream that is retrieved by using the HttpWebResponse class.

Note The HTTP request is made up of the following parts:
1. Sending the request is covered by using the HttpWebRequest.Timeout method.
2. Getting the response header is covered by using the HttpWebRequest.Timeout method.
3. Reading the body of the response is not covered by using the HttpWebResponse.Timeout method. In ASP.NET 1.1 and in later versions, reading the body of the response is covered by using the HttpWebRequest.ReadWriteTimeout method. The HttpWebRequest.ReadWriteTimeout method is used to handle cases where the response headers are retrieved in a timely manner but where the reading of the response body times out.
You set the ASP.NET time-out value in the web.config file or in the machine.config file that uses the executionTimeout property in the <httpRuntime> section.

Note If the debug property in the .config file is set to true, the executionTimeout property is ignored.

You must set the ASP.NET executionTimeout setting to a value that is larger than or equal to the value that is determined by the following formula:
(HttpWebRequest.Timeout * 2) + HttpWebRequest.ReadWriteTimeout

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STATUS

This behavior is by design.

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REFERENCES

For more information, see the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web sites:
<httpRuntime> element
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e1f13641(vs.71).aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e1f13641(vs.71).aspx)

HttpWebRequest.Timeout property
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httpwebrequest.timeout(vs.71).aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httpwebrequest.timeout(vs.71).aspx)

HttpWebRequest.ReadWriteTimeout property
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httpwebrequest.readwritetimeout(vs.71).aspx (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httpwebrequest.readwritetimeout(vs.71).aspx)

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APPLIES TO
•Microsoft ASP.NET 1.1
•Microsoft ASP.NET 1.0

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Keywords: 
kbtshoot kbprb KB904262

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