I looked at the source code. The 'outbound' property is set to false when the client sends a request to JBossAS and to true when JBossAS responds back. The exception means that property has not been set. Earlier in the stack trace, in CommonClient.invoke, line 404, we find that someone commited the cardinal sin of exception handling - they dropped the exception on the floor not even bothering to log it. Instead, they called processPivotInternal which eventually threw the exception that you saw. So that is why the exception makes no sense - the real cause for the problem was thrown away. Unfortunately, unless someone else has any ideas, the only thing I can think of is for you to patch CommonClient.invoke and log the exception so that you can discover the root cause. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4172673#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...