I'm added a new feature that makes a network request, and it's working in dev. Why wont it work in QA / Prod?

I pushed a change that includes a new network request to an external endpoint.

It makes a TCP request using CURL on port 8981 to an external service. Everything works fine locally, but when I push it to QA or prod, it times out. What gives?

Answer

Production and QA environments are restricted for security reasons. Most of these environments restrict outbound traffic with a firewall on all ports and protocols by default, except for a small list. Some servers don't allow any traffic out, but most allow outbound TCP requests over ports 80 and 443.

If you're getting timeouts, your traffic is probably blocked. Tell the server administrator exactly what you need opened (e.g. "I need to make HTTTP requests on port 7975 to exampleservice.org" or "I need to make UDP requests to blend's NTP server") and we'll try to get it added to the whitelist.

Incidentally, if you know you'll be building a feature that needs a network integration over a non 80/443 port, it's best to notify the server administrator in advance.