Is forcing Http tunneling mode possible ?

Question

Hello,
in order to make some tests between 2 PC on the same intranet, I would like to know if it's possible to force RMI to use http tunneling, and to choose the mode : http-to-port or http-to-cgi ?
If possible, please tell me how.
Many thanks in advance.
C. BREZAK

Answer 1

RMI depends on custom socket factories (sun.rmi.transport.proxy.RMIHttpToPortSocketFactory, sun.rmi.transport.proxy.RMIHttpToCGISocketFactory) for carrying out the HTTP tunneling of RMI request if normal way of establishing a connection with the remote object fails. If no particular RMI socket factory is set in RMI application, RMI runtime chooses the RMIMasterSocketFactory() for creating client and server sockets. This socket factory maintains a list of socket factories which should be tried in order in establishing a successful connection with the remote object. This list includes RMIDirectSocketFacotry and HTTP tunneling socket factories mentioned above if http.proxyHost proerty is set.
You can force HTTP tunneling by explicitly setting default socket factory (RMISocketFactory.setSocketFactory(...)) to sun.rmi.transport.proxy.RMIHttpToPortSocketFactory in the client application. If this fails you can try setting default socket factory to RMIHttpToCGISocketFactory. It may not be possible trying these two options in the same instance of the program, because setSocketFactory() does not allow you to change the already defined default factory to the new one. This may not be elegant solution.
-- Srinath Mandalapu