HTTPS over Apache commons HttpsClient API

Question

I have an EJB (running on Weblogic 6.1) that currently uses java.net.URL to connect to an Apache webserver to read some data. The problem with this is that I am unable to set a timeout on the URL connection. To get around this problem, I have rewritten it using the Apache Commons' HttpClient package (version 2.0 alpha 2).
My problem is that whenever I try to connect, I get an exception:
javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: FATAL Alert:HANDSHAKE_FAILURE - The handshake handler was unable to negotiate an acceptable set of security parameters.
It's very frustrating, because the EJB works fine when I use the java.net.URL class. So I am lead to believe that I have SSL set up and working correctly. If not, how is the URL class able to connect?
Since the URL I must connect to is a CGI, I used the GetMethod class as shown below...
----- snip --------
String urlText = "https://my.host.name/path/to/some.cgi?queryString";
URI myUrl = new URI( urlText );
Protocol myProtocol = Protocol.getProtocol(myUrl.getScheme());
HttpConnection connection = new HttpConnection(myUrl.getHost(), 443, myProtocol);
connection.setSoTimeout(10000);
HttpState state = new HttpState();
GetMethod method = new GetMethod(myUrl.toString());
// This is where the exception is thrown.
method.execute(state, connection);
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

OK, nevermind. I solved the problem.
For the record, the problem is the order of jars in my weblogic server classpath. I found a related problem in a Weblogic newsgroup that suggested putting the JSSE jars in the classpath before the weblogic.jar. So I tried that and now everything works.
It is still very odd that this problem only pops up when I use the HttpClient package, not when using java.net.URL.