Hello Ron, Thank you for your quick response! I have downloaded Remoting release 2.2.3.SP1 and replace the existing one in my standalone client and in JBoss As 4.2.3.GA server's libs (in the server configuration for JBoss Messaging 1.4.4.GA) I have configured remoting-bisocket-service.xml with the attribute values you suggest and have also added the attribute <attribute name="DisableRemotingChecks">true</attribute> to connection-factories-service.xml to make sure Messaging accepts the changes in those immutable attributes. Still no luck. The firewall does not timeout primary port 4457 because there is a ping between client and server. However, the ServerThread running on the client blocks on the secondary bind port, fixed to value 4458, to read the version, as shown in trace line 56411 [WorkerThread#0[192.168.6.1:4458]] TRACE org.jboss.remoting.transport.socket.ServerThread - blocking to read version from input stream The problem is that if no message is sent, the firewall times out that port and not 4457. Upon a new message is posted on the topic after the port 4458 has timed out at the firewall, the messages is received by the client and then the client and server detects a problem on port 4458. However, the client does not scale the exception to the Messaging ExceptionListener. Instead, it logs out the exception, and just keeps pinging the server on port 4457, which completes successfully every time. As I said, the ServerThread working on port 4458 gets stuck on a call to wait(). Should Remoting be informing JBM of the problem if I'm using generalizeSockeException? View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4258094#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...