PayPal Express Checkout Error SSL connection timeout

[kanine]

Hey All,
Started getting this message yesterday on a 1.3.9h install (yeah I know right).

After reviewing various threads here I ran up vanilla v1.5.5a install, configured the PP Express Checkout and got exactly the same error, so I'm guessing that it's pointing at the hosting provider.

So far I have not got anywhere yet with the hosting provider nor PayPal, so at this stage I just wanted to post a couple of useful links I found.

Information About the Changes
Announcement: PayPal SSL Certificate Upgrade Microsite
Link: PayPal SSL Certificate Changes

Hoping to make some further progress soon, and will post here for prosperity.

[kobra]

Post a link to your 1.3.9a install

[kanine]

This is the 1.3.9h storefront: http://www.office-products.com.au/shop/

[kobra]

Go here and enter your domain name with the www
You scored and "F" rating or fail

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

Share this with your host as only they can alter these settings

[kanine]

Thanks for that, is there any specific setting I should be asking them to look into as I've been going back and forth on this with them a fair bit already without moving towards any resolution.

I noticed today that the PayPal Express Button does work on occasions.

[kobra]

I would give them the ssl labs link and they should know what settings need to be adjusted

[kanine]

Well everything turned back to normal processing, with no change on hosting or zencart end about 48 hours after the problems first started. The only light I can shed on the situation is some information provided by the host.

One of our upstream providers was limiting MTU size during network maintenance they were performing which was having a negative impact on Australasian bound traffic. Some routed HTTPS packets were being dropped as MTU oversize.

Funnily enough I've still not heard anything back yet from PayPal support. Hopeless.

[bradbdivin]

I am having a problem very similar to this, As of last Friday morning, 28-May-2016, customers to my website are not able to use the Paypal links. We are getting the following message in red:
"An error occurred when we tried to contact the payment processor. Please try again, select an alternate payment method, or contact the store owner for assistance. Failed to connect to api-3t.paypal.com port 443: Connection timed out".

No recent changes had been made to the website Reeftown.com that would affect this. We upgraded from ZC 1.50 to ZC 1.55 in late April, and all was running fine until this problem occurred last Friday morning. Something changed that seems to be getting in the way of an outbound SSL/TSL connection from my hosted site, but I have contacted our hosting company (Dreamhost) and they do not know of anything with their hosting that could be causing this, even after sharing the contents of this case with them. Their support tech claims there have been no changes on their side.

Another weird problem has now also been noticed on our Contact Us message screen. The reCAPTCHA routine is getting hung, so it does not even finish painting the screen, and there are no icons below the Message input window at all. You can enter a Subject and Message, but there is no way to Send or verify the challenge anymore. It's just stuck with no way to continue to the next screen. Thus we are receiving no emails since 25-May, and we usually get several per week if not several per day. Because reCAPTCHA also depends on an outbound connection, this seems more like our hosting company's issue to resolve.

The Reeftown.com website scores an A on ttps://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html testing, and I've confirmed our certificate is SHA-256 and 2048-bit, and we are running Zencart v1.55, which was the most current version as of February 2016, so I believe we've done everything possible to ensure we're compliant with PCI requirements.

Paypal has security updates coming on June 17, 2016, but since that is a future date I don't expect that to be the issue here, and we have already gone through their list of requirements, so everything seems correct.

We've received no Paypal orders since Thursday May 27 so this is hurting pretty bad.

Like kanine, we've received no meaningful response from either Dreamhost or Paypal, and we've been updating our tickets and calling them almost daily. Would be nice if it just started working again as it did for kanine.

I'll be traveling over the next two days and won't get back to this thread until maybe Sunday. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[DrByte]

I am having a problem very similar to this, As of last Friday morning, 28-May-2016, customers to my website are not able to use the Paypal links. We are getting the following message in red:
"An error occurred when we tried to contact the payment processor. Please try again, select an alternate payment method, or contact the store owner for assistance. Failed to connect to api-3t.paypal.com port 443: Connection timed out".

That's not a Zen Cart issue. It's a problem with your hosting company's server or firewall configuration.

[bradbdivin]

Thanks very much, Doc. This is exactly what I needed to push this back on them. I appreciate your quick response on this. And I really appreciate hearing from the top dog.

Regards,
Brad Martin