IIS Application pool identity - iis

Question

I am attempting to obtain a data feed from yahoo finance. I am doing this with the following code:
System.Net.WebRequest request = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(http://download.finance.yahoo.com/download/quotes.csv?format=sl&ext=.csv&symbols=^ftse,^ftmc,^ftas,^ftt1x,^dJA);
request.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
// set properties of the request
using (System.Net.WebResponse response = request.GetResponse())
{
using (System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
return reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
I have placed this code into a console application and, using Console.WriteLine on the output I receive the information I require. I have used the 'Run as..' command to execute this using a specific domain account.
When I use this code from within a Page load I receive the following error message "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 76.13.114.90:80".
This seems to suggest that the call is reaching yahoo (is this true?) and that there is something missing.
This would suggest there is an identity difference in the calls between the console application and application pool.
Environment is: Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0, .net 4.0

Answer 1

"Target machine actively refused it" indicates that the TCP connection itself is not succeeding. This could be due to the fact that the Proxy settings when run under IIS are not the same as those that apply when you run in the console.
You can fix this by setting a WebProxy on your request, that points to the proxy server being used in the environment.

Answer 2

Yes, an active refusal is indication that the target machine is receiving the request and the information in the headers is either incorrect or insufficient to process the request. It is entirely possible that if you had to run this call using a "run as" command in console that the application pool's identity user does not have the appropriate permission or username. You can attempt to change the identity user to this specific domain account to see if that alleviates the problem, but you may have to isolate this particular function into its own application pool in order to protect the rest of the website from having this specification.