SOAP blocked by a firewall?! Isn't that the whole POINT of SOAP?

[ri...@cardsetc.com]

Dear all,

I've written myself a little Java applet and servlet using Apache SOAP
(yeah, I know, I probably should have gone with SOAP::Lite for the applet,
but I'm lazy :), and it's all running and published and working and I'm a
happy enough man :)

However, when I try it on SOME corporate (very strict) networks (not all,
so it's not a problem inherent to the code) I get a 'connection timed out'
- not from the Web page itself, but from the applet ON that page (i.e. when
it starts using SOAP):

[SOAPException: faultCode=SOAP-ENV:Client; msg=Error opening socket:
Connection timed out: connect;
targetException=java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Error opening socket:
Connection timed out: connect]

So, now, would that imply a firewall problem? Or a proxy problem? Because,
if it does, um... isn't that the whole POINT of going to the trouble of
using SOAP, that it punches through all this? :)

My question therefore is: if _I_ can access the site, but my applet cannot,
how is the firewall managing to stop me? Could I put some headers in my
request (User-Agent, for example) to get around this? There IS a proxy
server, but shouldn't I be able to break through it? If not, why am I using
SOAP?

Please restore my faith :)

Confused,

Richard Kennard.