Issuing Test Request to an SSL Server

While diagnosing problems between Web Server 7.0 and web browsers, it is useful to analyze the requests and responses. When SSL/TLS is not used, for capturing requests and responses between web browser and the server you can use any network capture tool such as ethereal.

But when SSL/TLS is used for communication, you can use the OpensSSL's s_client application for tapping the communication.

Execute the following command (after successful SSL connection) and enter the test HTTP request as desired.

$openssl s_client -host localhost -port 8080 -quiet

By using the same command without the -quiet flag, you can see information about the connection, such as the server DN, Certificate name and negotiated cipher suite.

For testing particular cipher suites, check the -cipher option. For example:

$openssl s_client -host localhost -port 8080  -cipher DES-CBC-SHA

For more information, see the s_client man page at http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/s_client.html.