OpenShift route not working for SMF

Connectors & Integrations
1

I’ve got a broker running in OpenShift. I’m trying to send it messages through JMS. If I port-forward to the Kubernetes service on port 55555, it works fine. But if I create a Kubernetes route to that port, it doesn’t work, my client (jmsTemplate in Spring Boot) shows the message:

2026-01-29T11:50:47.099-05:00 ERROR 21012 — [rester] [nio-8089-exec-4] o.a.c.c.C.[.[.[/].[dispatcherServlet] : Servlet.service() for servlet [dispatcherServlet] in context with path threw exception [Request processing failed: org.springframework.jms.UncategorizedJmsException: Uncategorized exception occurred during JMS processing] with root cause

java.io.IOException: Could not read valid SMF Header from network. found smf version=0
at com.solacesystems.jcsmp.protocol.smf.SMFFrameHandler.decode(SMFFrameHandler.java:83) ~[sol-jms-jakarta-10.24.1.jar:na]
at com.solace.transport.impl.netty.NettyTransportInboundFrameDecoderAdapter.decode(NettyTransportInboundFrameDecoderAdapter.java:29) ~[sol-jms-jakarta-10.24.1.jar:na]

What could be the cause?

Thanks
Michael

2

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Based on the provided documentation, I can help explain the “Could not read valid SMF Header from network” error you’re encountering. Let me break down the issue:

The error occurs because of how SMF (Solace Message Format) traffic interacts with OpenShift routes. Here are the key points:

  1. SMF can run over multiple transports:

    • TCP/TLS connections
    • HTTP(S)/web-transport

  2. OpenShift routes are primarily designed to work with HTTP transports. This explains why:

    • Web-socket connections (like Node.js SDK) work successfully
    • JCSMP (Java) connections fail because they use direct TCP connections

The root cause is that OpenShift routes are not properly handling the SMF protocol traffic when using TCP/port 55555.

To resolve this issue, you have two main options:

  1. Use a protocol/SDK that supports web-socket transport:

    • JavaScript/Node.js SDK
    • C SDK
    • Java RTO SDK

  2. Use TLS with proper certificate configuration:

    • Configure server certificates on the Solace Event Broker
    • Use TCPS (secure) connections instead of TCP
    • Ensure proper certificate chain trust is established

For the TLS approach, you’ll need to:

  • Configure proper server certificates on the broker
  • Ensure certificate trust is properly established between client and broker
  • Use TCPS connections with appropriate certificate validation

This is a known limitation with OpenShift routes and SMF protocol traffic. The recommended approach is to either:

  • Use a load balancer instead of routes for external access
  • Use web-socket capable SDKs
  • Implement proper TLS configuration if using JCSMP

For more detailed information and configuration steps, you can refer to:
OpenShift TCPS routes

3

You can check the OpenShift route, is it an L7 or L4 route? SMF requires L4.

4

Hi Michael,

Can you share your route yaml?

oc get route “name” -o yaml?

Which JMS API version are you using?