Checking if Port is Open in Rails - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

In my Rails 3.2 app, I'm using embedded javascript charts from TradingView. However, it seems that port 443 must be opened for it to show. Therefore, I'm trying to do a check on if the port is open for the user, and if not, show something aside from the chart.
I found this post, "Ruby - See if a port is open" and have been working of this answer:
require 'socket'
require 'timeout'
def port_open?(ip, port, seconds=1)
Timeout::timeout(seconds) do
begin
TCPSocket.new(ip, port).close
true
rescue Errno::ECONNREFUSED, Errno::EHOSTUNREACH
false
end
end
rescue Timeout::Error
false
end
However, I modified it to be:
def port_open?(ip, port=443, seconds=1)
since the port to check will always be the same for me.
I'm calling the method like this:
#ip = request.remote_ip
test = port_open?(#ip)
I discovered the issue when I was behind a firewall.
What I don't understand is that I can see the chart now that I'm not behind a firewall, yet if I run the code below locally, I can see the chart, but I receive false.
However, if I change the port=3000 I receive true. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

Ports under 1000 are protected by the system and need to be run with root privileges. At first glance, I'd guess this is what's wrong.

Answer 2

Port 443 is the normal channel for SSL (https) connections -- it would be quite surprising if a company set outbound restrictions on this port on their firewall. More likely, it's the IP address of the site that may be restricted.
Get to a command line and try with telnet. First try something you know works, like google
> telnet google.com 443
> Trying 74.125.226.231...
> Connected to google.com.
> Escape character is '^]'.
The Connected to google.com response demonstrates that your machine has made a successful connection to the port and IP address. Otherwise, it will hang at the Trying x.x.x.x... line.
Another possibility is that your intranet is set up to go through a proxy server -- you make a connection internally to a machine in your network, and it in turn makes the actual connection. This can screw things up -- not sure what you would need to do to handle that, but something special -- browsers have special settings for handling proxy servers, so your Rails code would need to, as well.