Troubleshooting Gateway Communications

This diagram of network architecture presents a simplified view of an Interaction Web Tools production environment. In a typical environment, the CIC server is in a secure internal network. The web server is in an area that is at least partially secure. Also, multiple web servers could share communications load, which introduces proxy servers and load balancers into the mix.

Sometimes, a proxy server, load balancer (F5), or firewall discards or changes HTTP header information in the messages sent from a website visitor's browser to the CIC server. If anything changes this HTTP header information, website visitors cannot submit a chat request.

It is critical that you do not set up a proxy server, load balancer, firewall or any other network element in such a way that makes it appear that all communications originate from a network IP address and not the visitor's IP address. Hundreds of communications coming from the same IP address look like a Denial of Service attempt to the CIC server.

By default, Interaction Web Tools expects this header information to contain the CIC server name (as host) and its proper port number. It does not expect the header to contain the web server name and its outside world port number.

Note:
The Interaction Web Tools Developer's Guide describes the other elements of this message header: Content_Range, Accept, Accept-CharSet, and Content-type.

The critical elements in this header are:

X-FORWARDED-FOR

This HTTP header field identifies the originating IP address of a client connecting to a web server through an HTTP proxy or load balancer.

Interaction Web Tools uses the information in X-FORWARDED-FOR to get the website visitor's IP address, as multiple proxies and load-balancers might have been used. Interaction Web Tools uses this address to identify the website visitor's IP address and to perform DoS protection based on IP-specific DoS settings.

Example: client, proxy1, proxy2

Host

The Host HTTP header field specifies the Internet host and port number of the requested resource, as obtained from the original URI given by the user or referring resource.

Interaction Web Tools expects this Host field to contain the CIC server name or IP address and its proper port number. Interaction Web Tools never uses default port 80 in place of the information expected in this field.