HTTP Error: 400 when sending msmq message over http - http

Question

I am developing a solution which will utilize msmq to transmit data between two machines. Due to the seperation of said machines, we need to use HTTP transport for the messages.
In my test environment I am using a Windows 7 x64 development machine, which is attempting to send messages using a homebrew app to any of several test machines I have control over.
All machines are either windows server 2003 or server 2008 with msmq and msmq http support installed.
For any test destination, I can use the following queue path name with success:
FORMATNAME:DIRECT=TCP:[machine_name_or_ip]\private$\test_queue
But for any test destination, the following always fails
FORMATNAME:DIRECT=$/test_queue
I have used all permutations of machine names/ips available. I have created mappings using the method described at this blog post. All result in the same HTTP Error: 400.
The following is the code used to send messages:
MessageQueue mq = new MessageQueue(queuepath);
System.Messaging.Message msg = new System.Messaging.Message
{
Priority = MessagePriority.Normal,
Formatter = new XmlMessageFormatter(),
Label = "test"
};
msg.Body = txtMessageBody.Text;
msg.UseDeadLetterQueue = true;
msg.UseJournalQueue = true;
msg.AcknowledgeType = AcknowledgeTypes.FullReachQueue | AcknowledgeTypes.FullReceive;
msg.AdministrationQueue = new MessageQueue(#".\private$\Ack");
if (SendTransactional)
mq.Send(msg, MessageQueueTransactionType.Single);
else
mq.Send(msg);
Additional Information: in the IIS logs on the destination machines I can see each message I send being recorded as a POST with a status code of 200.
I am open to any suggestions.

Answer 1

The problem can be caused by the IP address of the destination server having been NAT'ed through a Firewall.
In this case the IIS server receives the message okay and passes it on to MSMQ. MSMQ then reads the message and sees the destination of the message as being something different than the known IP addresses of the server. At this point MSMQ rejects the message and IIS returns a HTTP status 400.
Fortunately the solution is fairly straightforward. Look in %windir%\System32\msmq\mapping. This folder can contain a bunch of xml files (often sample files are provided) that each contain mappings between one address and another. The name of the file can be anything you like, here is an example of the xml formatted contents:
<redirections xmlns="msmq-queue-redirections.xml">
<redirection>
<from>http://external_host/msmq/external_queue</from>
<to>http://internal_host/msmq/internal_queue</to>
</redirection>
</redirections>
The MSMQ service then needs restarting to pickup the new configuration, for instance from the command line:
net stop msmq
net start msmq
References:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnbreakwell/archive/2008/01/29/unable-to-send-msmq-3-0-http-messages.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms701477(v=vs.85).aspx

Answer 2

Maybe you have to encode the $ as %24.