PayPal Error (28) - connection timed out - website payments down

[aiko70]

Hi,

I'm not sure if anyone can help us with this, but here is our issue:

I logged into our email today to see over 85 failed Paypal transactions - all of which are returning the error (28) connection timed out. This began happening yesterday, and is continuing through the present time. Basically our business is shut down, as we use PayFlow and Paypal to manage our credit card transactions (they gave us a much better rate than the processor we were previously using). The error happened with any transaction, using either of the 2 ways to checkout via Paypal, or their credit card checkout.

First, we spoke with PayPal, and gave them copies of the error emails. They insisted that it was not an issue with Paypal, and told us to contact our hosting provider.

So, we contacted our hosting provider. He recreated the issues we were having, got the same errors, went over our Zen Cart installation, and checked everything very thoroughly. He says the error is definitely a Paypal error and there are not any problems at all with the hosting or Zen Cart.

We contacted Paypal again, and they said they thought it was Zen Cart. I explained to them that the hosting company had gone over everything having to do with Zen Cart, and there were no problems whatsoever. Still, she insisted it was not Paypal and possibly Zen Cart.

The background on this - we have not changed a thing on the website, at all. It was running very smoothly until yesterday when we started having the (28) error and people could not check out. We also have a mirror wholesale website that we are able to place orders through without a problem. The only difference is the IP address. When we asked our Paypal contact about this, she said our IP address was not blocked.

Just now, I asked our hosting company to move the entire store over to a different IP address (assuming that should not affect anything adversely - I am sure they would let me know if it would)

If anyone here has any input at all on this problem, I would really appreciate some insight into what could be causing this and any other possible solutions you may have. If you would like to see the error on the site, it is www.zeropong.com - add something to your cart and try to check out - all 3 ways of checking out, the error is reproducible.

Thanks so much!!!

[stevesh]

Start by looking through the first thread listed in Similar Threads, below.

Who's your host ?

[aiko70]

Thanks, I didn't see that one there! Our host is TMD Hosting.

[aiko70]

OK after reading the thread below, which was very helpful:

--- Admin->Tools->Version/server info - gives me a 406 not acceptable error with the following text:

An appropriate representation of the requested resource /zcadmin/server_info.php could not be found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

--- curltester.php?paypal=1 gave me the following:

28 connect() timed out!
Array
(
[url] => "https://api-3t.paypal.com/nvp"
[content_type] =>
[http_code] => 0
[header_size] => 0
[request_size] => 0
[filetime] => -1
[ssl_verify_result] => 0
[redirect_count] => 0
[total_time] => 20.017191
[namelookup_time] => 0.014105
[connect_time] => 0
[pretransfer_time] => 0
[size_upload] => 0
[size_download] => 0
[speed_download] => 0
[speed_upload] => 0
[download_content_length] => -1
[upload_content_length] => -1
[starttransfer_time] => 0
[redirect_time] => 0
[certinfo] => Array
(
)

[redirect_url] =>
)



EOF

--- I couldn't find anything in version 1.5.0 for "CURL Proxy Status"

Thanks again for the help!

EDIT: I just verified that the server_info.php does exist by checking through our FTP program - not sure what would be causing that error then

[DrByte]

Give your host the curltester.php?paypal=1 URL and results, and have them sort it out.

Error 28-connection-timed-out means there's a communication problem between your host's server and PayPal's server.

It has nothing to do with Zen Cart itself.

Your host can monkey with the curltester.php file and not affect your store, as it's a standalone script specifically intended to help hosts diagnose and fix their server problems.

[DrByte]

--- I couldn't find anything in version 1.5.0 for "CURL Proxy Status"

Irrelevant in your case.