Many times, you would have seen errors and their error numbers pop on your screen when you hit up a website. Most of the people are clueless about what the different errors mean. Once you know what these errors stand for, you can know how to fix it. You would have seen Error 522: Connection timed out on several sites. This is one of the most common errors and can be usually seen on websites that use the services of CloudFlare.
What is ‘error 522 connection timed out’ Error?
Usually, when you see error 522 in your browser, the server of the website is too busy to respond. It might be overloaded with other requests and is not able to process yours. Sometimes even the server’s firewall could be held responsible for blocking your IP which shows you this error. If the server is currently offline due to some problems, you could be seeing this error.
Reasons for ‘error 522 connection timed out’ Error
There are several reasons for this error and knowing them will help you in fixing the problem in case you see this error on a site. Most of the errors are on the server side and if it is your website, you must take measures to fix it. Below are some of the most probable reasons for error 522 when CloudFlare is being used.
Website Server is too Overloaded
If the server is handling too many requests at the time, it can get overloaded and thus return you an error 522. You can check the website after a time and it must resolve the issue. During peak times, many sites can show you this error.
Website Server has a Firewall
A lot of websites have a firewall on which can block certain suspicious IPs. If you are the owner of the website, you must always make sure that even if there is a firewall, you must whitelist the IPs that your users use. This can be done through the dashboard of your server.
Network Routing Issue between CloudFlare and Website Server
This may also be a reason behind the error and it is the most difficult one to troubleshoot. In most cases, this is a problem with CloudFlare and not your website. If you feel this is the reason, you can raise a support ticket to CloudFlare to troubleshoot the issue.
Website Server may be of a Shared Hosting Plan
If you are running your website on a shared hosting plan, chances are CloudFlare won’t run on it. The resources on a shared hosting are shared by many sites and this could harm the utilisation of resources by CloudFlare. Thus, in this case, the only thing you can do is to upgrade your hosting plan.
How to fix ‘error 522 connection timed out’ error?
The best way to fix error 522 is to disable the plugins from your web server and make sure there is enough free space for CloudFlare to run its services. There are many advantages associated with CloudFlare and to use it efficiently, you need to make sure that your site doesn’t show this error.
Final Thoughts
Being a web developer, you must take the following reasons into account and try to see if you can avoid those. Some reasons are out of your hand and there is not much that you can do to fix it but to upgrade your server. Now you are aware of the reasons as well as fixes for error 522 so it shouldn’t trouble you like earlier.