wsgw (mywsproxy): Valid backside connection could not be established: Failed to establish a backside connection

Setup:

1. Datapower XI50 is on corporate network
   
2. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 with Windows XP and hosting WebSphere application server 6.1 ( mywasnode)
3. Web Service Proxy is virtualizing the Web services hosted on mywasnode.
   Following is the Web Services proxy set up.
   
   
   
   
   

Request comes to HTTP front side handler AddressSearchFSH via URI <dp:ipaddress>/EastAddressSearch and is directed to actual service end point

<remote-endpoint-host>:9080/EastAddress/Services/AddressSearch. This is a plain and simple setup. However, I have been encountering the following errors

After much head scratching, I found the solution and as it happens with all such issues, the resolution is very simple. The culprit was Windows XP firewall. Since I had WAS running locally, Windows XP firewall was obstructing all the requests coming from Datapower to my WAS Web Service. Added the Web services port (9080 in this case) to the firewall exception list, voila!! everything started working fine.

For those of you wondering where to add this, please see the following screen shots.

Go to Start> Settings. Control panel > Security center> click on Manage settings for Firewall, On the Windows firewall window , go to exceptions tab, click on Add Port button.

In the pop-up window enter the port number and give a description to your exception and click OK. You are done.


Hope this is helpful.