I am running into an issue where the exchange web services (OWA & Active Sync) stop responding to external requests. Ive been working on this for several weeks now trying to find the reason this keeps occurring. Some things to note from my troubleshooting are: The problem doesnt appear to be time or sever-up-time related, as I have found no pattern for when this occurs. This is only related to requests coming from outside. Internally, OWA always comes back with the logon-page. While this would seem to point to a router issue, I have verified the sessions coming in on the router and that they are nating internally. I went even further and enabled logging on IIS and on Windows Firewall on the server. When the session comes in the Windows Firewall logs an Opening session, after a few ms it logs the session closing. Ive looked in the IIS and HttpErr logs and found no instances of a session opening when this occurs. Its as if IIS never sees the request. To rule out Windows Firewall, I disabled it only to have the same issue occur again. Ive tried to narrow down possible services by restarting all the Exchange and IIS services. This never corrects the issue; however, restarting the server clears whatever is going on and everything starts functioning again for a day or two days. Ive even had it occur again after only several hours from restarting the sever. My initial thought was that this must be related to some session id or session time out parameter. However, the pattern, or lack thereof, of when this occurs seems to rule out any time-out setting. Does anyone have any suggestions or is anyone else seeing issues like this?I should also note that I have installed SP1 to see if the problem would correct itself; however, this had no effect.

Brad, What type of firewall are you running in front of your Exchange server? Since you never have the problem from your internal network, then it's possible that your firewall really is doing something to make the sessions drop prematurely, even though the translations are correct. Also, when the external connection doesn't work, do you receive an error in the web browser or on your mobile devices? Does Outlook Anywhere work? Rob

We are running a cisco router at the gateway using IOS image. When things stop working... on the PDA I get "waiting for network" Result: the server could not be reached. This can be caused by temporary network conditions. Support Code: 0x80072EFD. OWA just comes back with the basic "This page can not be displayed" message. I could see with 'direct-push' maybe an issue with the connection timing out inproperly; however, that doesnt make sense for OWA not responding. This is the same no matter where I try from on the outside. I ran netmon on the server both while things were working and not working to see if I could make out any difference in the traffic. Both capture start off exactly the same with the TCP session being answered by the server and followed with a TCP response; however, when working I then see https responses from the server to the host after the initial tcp connnection. On the capture when things were'nt working I am not seeing this traffic from the server. Again, to me It looks as the tcp stack is screwing up or something and the call (although answered by the server) never reaches the IIS application.

Also forgot to mention that I have tried re-cycling the router. This also has no effect on making things work again. So far the only way I have been able to get things to work again is to re-boot the server.

Brad, What version of IOS are you running? Are there any bugs known for this IOS version? Do you run the FW feature set? Have you run any debugs on the router?

We are running ios Version 12.4(6)T7. I've checked the CBAC settings onios and have enabled debugging. I haveinspection enabled for https....for testing I disabled it and active-sync began working. I'm going to look at this further to see why the inspection is causing the issue. My idle-time isset for 1800 sec. which I believe is correct according to the Exchange documentation.

When you disabled the inspection for https did the OWA problem disappear also?

At this point, yesboth services are working. The same as rebooting the server previously corrected the problem. I'm going to wait and see if the issue comes back before starting https inspection again, typically the services would stop within a couple days. Im also still going thru ios bug information....so far I havent came accross anything glaring.

Well, the same problem has occured again......I still have https inspection turned off on CBAC in the router. I also checked will issuing traffic inside to make sure no Inpsection sessions were open to the Client Access Server. I'm really getting frustrated with this....again I am seeing traffic comming into the server; however, no events are logged in the httperr.log or IIS log files. ####This is from the Windows Firewall log on the Client Access Server###################### 2007-12-07 11:54:08 OPEN-INBOUND TCP ##deviceip## ##serverip## 1188 443 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:10 OPEN-INBOUND TCP ##deviceip## ##serverip## 1189 443 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:13 OPEN-INBOUND TCP ##deviceip## ##serverip## 1190 443 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:16 OPEN-INBOUND TCP ##deviceip## ##serverip## 1191 443 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:25 CLOSE TCP ##serverip## ##deviceip## 443 1186 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:30 CLOSE TCP ##serverip## ##deviceip## 443 1188 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:33 CLOSE TCP ##serverip## ##deviceip## 443 1189 - - - - - - - - -2007-12-07 11:54:28 CLOSE TCP ##serverip## ##deviceip## 443 1187 - - - - - - - - - ################################################################################# The last thing I see in the HttpErr log file is below (note the time is GMT so take -5.00 to corrolate with above log ####This is from the HttpErr log file#################################################### Fields: date time c-ip c-port s-ip s-port cs-version cs-method cs-uri sc-status s-siteid s-reason s-queuename2007-12-07 11:43:15 ##deviceip## 1034 ##serverip## 443 HTTP/1.1 POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync?User=####&DeviceId=####&DeviceType=PocketPC&Cmd=Ping - 1 Connection_Dropped MSExchangeSyncAppPool2007-12-07 13:03:15 ##deviceip## 1040 ##serverip## 443 HTTP/1.1 POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync?User=####&DeviceId=####&DeviceType=PocketPC&Cmd=Ping - 1 Connection_Dropped MSExchangeSyncAppPool2007-12-07 14:03:55 ##deviceip## 1042 ##serverip## 443 - - - - - Timer_ConnectionIdle - ################################################################################# The last thing I see in the IIS log file is this (note the time is GMT so take -5.00 to corrolate with above logs) ####This is from the IIS log file######################################################## Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0Version: 1.0Date: 2007-12-07 14:01:48Fields: date time s-sitename s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status 2007-12-07 14:01:48 W3SVC1 ##serverip## POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/default.eas User=####&DeviceId=####&DeviceType=PocketPC&Cmd=Ping&Log=V25_LdapC0_LdapL0_RpcC35_RpcL31_Hb3540_Rto1_Erq1_S1_ 443 ##domain##\##username## ##deviceip## MSFT-PPC/5.1.2200 200 0 0 ################################################################################# So I'm stuck again.....

Were you able to find a solution to this issue. I am seeing the same problem as of this morning.

I have the same problem - could you share a solution you used ? Specs:WS2003 with Echange 2003 and OWA. Symptoms: OWA fails to load about 15 to 30min every hours.