Connection timed out. Why?

I get an exception when I run this code. Why?

Exception in thread "main" java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URL;

public class MainClass {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs", "com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol");

    URL url = new URL("https://www.verisign.com/");
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));

    String line;
    while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
      System.out.println(line);
    }
    in.close();
  }
}

Exception:

Exception in thread "main" java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:333)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:195)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:182)
    at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:366)
    at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:525)
    at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.connect(SSLSocketImpl.java:550)
    at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.BaseSSLSocketImpl.connect(BaseSSLSocketImpl.java:141)
    at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(NetworkClient.java:163)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:394)
    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:529)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.<init>(HttpsClient.java:272)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.New(HttpsClient.java:329)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.java:172)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(HttpURLConnection.java:801)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.connect(AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.java:158)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1049)
    at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionOldImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionOldImpl.java:204)
    at java.net.URL.openStream(URL.java:1010)
    at https.ssl.MainClass.main(MainClass.java:13)

Things you should look at:

• can you ping the host?
• can you connect to http://www.verisign.com using a web browser?
• can you connect to https://www.verisign.com using a web browser?
• can you connect to http://www.verisign.com using your program?
• can you connect to anything using your program?

The chances are that your problem is firewall related. My first guess would be that you don't have the correct environment variables or Java system properties set to tell the JVM to use a local proxy server for outgoing HTTP / HTTPS requests.