[Quickfixj-users] Issues with Heartbeat When Connecting via HTTP Proxy

[Florian L. <fl...@un...>]

Hi everyone

I have a weird issue that my quickfix initiator works fine when 
connecting directly to the message supplier, but as soon as we connect 
via an HTTP proxy, it works for the first n seconds and then the 
messages stop arriving.

I've now managed to trace the problem to the fact that those n seconds 
are exactly what is configured for the heartbeat interval, i.e. if I set 
this heartbeat interval higher, then it works longer and if I set it 
e.g. to 5, then it already stops after 5 seconds.

At first I assumed the counter-party just closes the connection if they 
don't receive the heartbeat on time, but then I learned that after a 
missing heartbeat message first a test request is sent out and only 
after that a connection would be closed. So it seems to me that actually 
the sending out of the heartbeat from the Quickfix/j library (version 
2.2.0) via proxy somehow seems to block the incoming traffic, as though 
the proxy was a one way street. Since the logon message exchange works, 
I know that communicating both ways actually works, but it seems that 
sending out a heartbeat while simultaneously processing an incoming 
stream of messages seems to somehow cut of this incoming stream for 
good. I can literally see in my logs that the incoming messages are 
processed via the fromApp method exactly up to the point that my first 
heartbeat is sent out, so logging this heartbeat via the toAdmin method 
is always the last thing logged before the communication stops 
altogether....no new incoming or outgoing messages are logged until the 
software is restarted.

Has anyone come across a similar issue? And is there a solution for it? 
For the moment we think about just disabling the heartbeat messages 
altogether (that seems to work for now), but that it more of a hack 
workaround in my opinion and not an actual solution.

Thanks for your support and regards,
Florian