If you’re a seasoned web developer or just a first-time beginner, chances are that you’ve probably heard about Cloudflare.
Cloudflare is an amazing tool that you use for internet security and to use as a CDN. setting up
Cloudflare is fairly simple however during or after the setup process some errors may occur.
Today we’re going to be taking a look at Error 522 and it’s the solution.
What’s error 522:
Error code 522 is an https status error that occurs when a reliable connection can’t be established between the web server and Cloudflare.
In technical terms, it occurs when the TCP handshake fails. It also manifests itself in the form of an error message “ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT”.
This can be caused by a number of reasons, let’s discuss them and see how you can go about solving the error 522.
Checking IP address blocks:
So the first step of solving this error 522 problem is to ensure that you aren’t blocking Cloudflare’s IPs through a firewall, .htaccess, or by using iptables.
These IP filtering applications can block Cloudflare’s IP addresses, because of which Cloudflare can’t establish a connection with the server. So be sure to check and ensure that all of Cloudflare’s IP ranges which you can get from their website, are whitelisted.
For checking your whitelisted or even blacklisted IP addresses on your WordPress website, you can log into your Cpanel open your file manager and locate the .htaccess site.
(Note: when making any changes in the .htaccess file you should make a copy so if anything goes wrong you will still have the correct file with you).
Now check which IP addresses are allowed and which are denied. If there the ip ranges for Cloudflare are denied then allow them.
Firewall problems:
Cloudflare is actually a reverse proxy meaning that it resides behind the firewall. In other words, the requests that the server receives will have to go through the proxy before they reach the firewall. The proxy changes the IP and hence numerous requests from the same IP address can occur.
This may not sit well with some security applications as they may consider this an indication of an attack, hence they may block such requests.
This should not occur if the IP ranges of Cloudflare are whitelisted, however, if they’re not, then this could cause the error 522.
The webserver is offline:
This error 522 could also be a fault of the hosting provider, make sure that you contact the support team of your host to ensure that your site isn’t down at the moment because of excessive load on the host’s servers.
The webserver may be offline and because of that Cloudflare can’t establish a reliable connection with it, and as a result of that, you get the error 522.
This is actually fairly common in shared hosting plans, some of the servers or even the top brands in hosting do have these problems so before you begin the taxing work of searching the IP filters and others such solutions do try to consult your host.
For people who just started their web developing journey, if you encounter such problems then contacting your host is the easiest way to get these problems resolved, the support team of good hosting companies will resolve most of your errors and can be a great help in situations like this.
DNS setting problem:
The error 522 can be caused by an incorrect DNS setting, for the proper functioning of Cloudflare you first need to correctly assign the DNS settings.
So do check to see if your DNS settings are configured properly, also if you change the address of your webserver then don’t forget to forward them to Cloudflare as well.
Changing the browser:
Sometimes the error code 522 is actually caused by the browser itself. For example, if you’re using chrome then try switching to another browser like firefox.
Clearing the cookies can sometimes also help. It’s a really basic solution but sometimes it works so it’s definitely worth trying.
Overloaded server:
Error code 522 can also be caused by an overflowing server, if the original server is receiving too many requests then it can cause such an error.
Cloudflare does a lot of work by reducing the overall load on the server and streamlining the traffic, however, depending on the capacity of the server it can get overloaded.
To solve this you can increase the capacity of your hosting plan or you can switch your hosting plan to a more powerful hosting plan or even switch the provider.
If you’re running a site that attracts large traffic volumes then switching to a dedicated server or a cloud server is a great idea.
Locations problems:
If you’ve switched up your location and see this error when trying to access the website from a different location. Then it is quite possible that some rather than all of the ip ranges are not whitelisted.
So make sure that all of Cloudflare’s IP ranges are properly configured on your server.
Conclusion:
So there you have it, hopefully, now you know how to resolve the infamous error code 522. We know how frustrating it is to have these types of errors, so if we’re able to help you and resolve your errors well co sider our job done.