WCF response too long - authentication error

Question

In the project that I currently work for, there is exposed a WCF service which returns an array of a business entity, let's call it Invoice :

Invoice[] GetInvoicesByTypeAndTime(InvoiceType invoiceType, byte startHour, byte? endHour);

The authentication mechanism used is Windows Authentication, the WCF service is hosted in a Web Application hosted on IIS 6.

At first when I used to get data more than 64kB a CommunicationException was thrown stating that "The maximum message size quota for incoming messages (65536) has been exceeded. To increase the quota, use the MaxReceivedMessageSize property on the appropriate binding element."

Fine, I just increased in App.config the values to 65536000 (I blatantly added three zeros at the end) for both maxReceivedMessageSize and maxBufferSize (the latter because it complained in an ArgumentException that "For TransferMode.Buffered, MaxReceivedMessageSize and MaxBufferSize must be the same value. Parameter name: bindingElement").

Now I could receive larger responses...

Until I hit another limit (I THINK) in that after 624 elements (approx. 2.2 MB) a strange exception is thrown :

System.ServiceModel.Security.MessageSecurityException: The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Negotiate'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Negotiate,NTLM'. ---> System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelFactory.HttpRequestChannel.HttpChannelRequest.WaitForReply(TimeSpan timeout)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

Server stack trace:

   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelUtilities.ValidateAuthentication(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response, WebException responseException, HttpChannelFactory factory)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelUtilities.ValidateRequestReplyResponse(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response, HttpChannelFactory factory, WebException responseException)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelFactory.HttpRequestChannel.HttpChannelRequest.WaitForReply(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.RequestChannel.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.RequestChannelBinder.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.InvokeService(IMethodCallMessage methodCall, ProxyOperationRuntime operation)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.Invoke(IMessage message)

Exception rethrown at [0]:

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
   at Test2.DBS.IDbService.GetInvoicesByTypeAndTime(InvoiceType invoiceType, Byte startHour, Nullable`1 endHour)
   at Test2.DBS.DbServiceClient.GetInvoicesByTypeAndTime(InvoiceType invoiceType, Byte startHour, Nullable`1 endHour) in D:\TEMP\Test2\Test2\Service References\DBS\Reference.cs:line 1445
   at Test2.Program.Main(String[] args) in D:\TEMP\Test2\Test2\Program.cs:line 19

Is there a limit on authenticated responses? Is there a limit from the ASP.NET settings?

Answer 1

Take a look at readerQuotas on the client side, if you want the TLDR version - to see if this is indeed your issue, you can set the max's (Int32.MaxValue) as shown below.

<readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647" maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />