How to detect intermittent time out problem in web applications?

Question

Have a n-tire web application and search often times out after 30 secs. How to detect the root cause of the problem?

Answer 1

You can add trace code to log its activities and then look at each operation to see what part times out and why.

Answer 2

Use the tool Wireshark.

Install this tool on each tier and watch the http traffic and packets. This worked for me when debugging a time out issue which actually turned out to be an issue with empty SOAP envelopes.

Doing this will at least tell you which tier the issue is with.