Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

Question

I am having an issue with a program where after 6 mins +- 5 secs we get the above exception. Some more info about the exception stacktrace is below. This all happens pretty religiously, 6 mins goes by and bam the following 3 exeptions. We have the application installed in 2 other environments and it is working fine there. I am hoping to find some server settings either IIS 6 or Server 2003 settings that may be causing this issue to occur.

I have reviewed some of the similar questions and don't see very many answers. I am hoping that maybe the information I have provided may help a little bit.

208741,Exception,,,,2011-06-21 00:30:14.193,SERVERNAME,2624,1,CLIENTNAME,The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive. ,   at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebClientProtocol.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
 at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpWebClientProtocol.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
 at Microsoft.Web.Services3.WebServicesClientProtocol.GetResponse(WebRequest request, IAsyncResult result)
 at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)
 at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.FixedSizeReader.ReadPacket(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartFrameHeader(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartReading(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.ProcessRead(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.TlsStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.PooledStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.Connection.SyncRead(HttpWebRequest request, Boolean userRetrievedStream, Boolean probeRead),2004437127,114,1

208742,Exception,,,,2011-06-21 00:30:14.227,SERVERNAME,2624,1,CLIENTNAME,Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. ,   at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.FixedSizeReader.ReadPacket(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartFrameHeader(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartReading(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.Security._SslStream.ProcessRead(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
 at System.Net.TlsStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.PooledStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
 at System.Net.Connection.SyncRead(HttpWebRequest request, Boolean userRetrievedStream, Boolean probeRead),2004437127,114,1

208743,Exception,,,,2011-06-21 00:30:14.287,SERVERNAME,2624,1,CLIENTNAME,An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host ,   
 at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size),-691097507,62,1

Answer 1

Is your application using HTTP keep-alive to keep a connection open, or is this one big file transfer?

Take a look at the timeout settings in IIS (MS has a good reference here), but my gut says it's not there - that error seems to imply that a RST packet is getting received, which doesn't make sense for a web server to use when closing a connection due to timeout.

Look into whether anything other than IIS could be involved; specifically, if there's a firewall or proxy server in the network path then it may be enforcing its own timeout value.