Like most technology standards, the modern day Internet and the OSI model in general was pieced together by the ISO organization using ideas from previous “home-grown” solutions such as those used in ARPANET, CYCLADES, and other private pre-Internet networks. The OSI model is divided the way it is based on the early conflicts from which it arose. With seven different layers, there is a lot of wiggle room for modifying and amending standards as technology evolves. The OSI layer concepts map to their actual implementations in WebSphere Application Server, which we refer to as the Channel Framework. The WebSphere Application Server Channel Famework consists of the Web Container, HTTP, SSL, and TCP Layers. As a support team, we find the WebSphere Application Server customers run into common channel framework issues . Based on our support experiences, we will be talking about problem determination in the channel framework, the must gather information from the channel framework point of view, and the two most common issues we encounter, the timeouts and connection issues. We will conclude with a short trace analysis of both of these issues.