HttpURLConnection Response code: 408 Request Timeout

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This gave me the correct hint: Request to j_security_check return 408 error only with right paramters

Querying the url /j_security_check is where to send the request to in order to retrieve cookies and the website status code.

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I'm trying to send a HTTP 'get' request to the website of the company I work for in order to verify that it is up and running. It is hosted on an "Apache Tomcat" server (7.0.34). However, the response code / message always times out.

When using the browser, the site clearly works (but it is slow). I need to be able to programmatically get the response code 200.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class HTTPRequest
{
    URL url;
    HttpURLConnection connection;

    public HTTPRequest() throws IOException
    {
        url = new URL("http://www.google.com");

        connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    connection.setConnectTimeout(15000);
    connection.setReadTimeout(15000);

        System.out.println("Response code: " + connection.getResponseCode());
        System.out
                .println("Response message: " + connection.getResponseMessage());
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        new HTTPRequest();
    }
}

Output Google:

Response code: 200
Response message: OK

Output company site:

Response code: 408
Response message: Request Timeout

I used the methods setConnectTimeout() and setReadTimeout() but they both have no effect, the result is printed just as fast as before: HttpURLConnection setConnectTimeout() has no effect