Cryptic WCF error messages (part 5 of N)

@YaronNaveh

This one isn't that cryptic actually but its cause is not always clear:

System.TimeoutException:

The request channel timed out while waiting for a reply after 00:01:00. Increase the timeout value passed to the call to Request or increase the SendTimeout value on the Binding. The time allotted to this operation may have been a portion of a longer timeout.

There can be various reasons why a proxy would throw such an exception with the main one being that the server is not available. However one other reason is that the maximum number of allowed sessions was reached. Some bindings (e.g. wsHttpBinding) under some configurations (e.g. Security or ReliableMessaging) cause the server to open a session with each unique client that accesses the service. A session is closed after the client explicitly closes the proxy or when the client is inactive for some time. There can only be a limited number of open sessions. When this limit is reached clients get the above timeout exception. In case you want to raise this limit you need to increase the number of allowd sessions

<behaviors>
   <serviceBehaviors>
     <behavior name="ServiceBehavior">
       <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
       <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
       <serviceThrottling maxConcurrentSessions="90" />
     </behavior>
   </serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>

Or from the configuration editor open the behaviour (#1 in image bellow), add an element (#2) and choose the "serviceThrottling" element (#3). Then change the number of sessions (second image bellow).







You shouldn't allow too much concurrent sessions as it can hurt service performance. The most important to remember is to explicitly close your proxy after you have finished using it:

client.Close();

@YaronNaveh

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