Fix: GitHub Access Error - Failed to Connect to github.com port 443, Time Out

Problem

When we clone a project from GitHub in the Visual Studio environment.

We may get a 443 error message.

Possible Reason

By common sense, if I got this kind of error, somebody else might or must have the same errors. Then I search online and found out hundreds of posts titled as.

"failed to connect to github com port 443: timed out"

There are multiple answers, such as suggesting that it is a proxy server issue, and the solution is something like:

However, all of these kinds of solutions are specific; even ones claiming they were successful in solving their issues, they never solve my problem. It seems they are not universal solutions.  I.e., the reason caused the issue might have quite different reasons.

Possible Solution

We tried to reinstall Git locally, although I did install Git previously by installing Visual Studio and configuring it following the standard procedure. It improved a little bit, such as 

• I could clone the GitHub through command line:
• I could clone GitHub through GitHub Desktop software.

This was from the command line - successful

However, I still could not clone from GitHub through Visual Studio,

And even for the Cloned one, I could open by Visual Studio, but could not make it work properly in Visual Studio, such as fetch, pull and push to the server.

Even for common line clones, after rebooting the computer, this did not work anymore:

Unfortunately, none of them is the right solution for the issue. It seems to me that must be a server access or configuration issue.

Resolution

Besides online search and trying to reinstall Git locally and change configuration settings, I also tried to get system people's help. With their examinations, I got several possible diagnoses, such as

• Lack of a proper GitHub License
• CyberArk setting issue: identity management software utilized primarily in the financial services, energy, retail, healthcare, and government markets.
• Forcepoint setup issue: a security software for data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall, and cross-domain solutions.

Actually, the issue was not all the cases mentioned above.

Solution

Finally, I got the solution from one tech:

• The errors were due to you being on the wrong agent type.  Your hostname should be added to a security group that has been created for agent-type management to ensure that you will always receive the Direct Connect agent on that workstation.  Once the Direct Connect agent is installed, the errors should clear
• Now, you were on the Proxy Connect agent. Client applications such as git, docker, awscli, etc, do not recognize the Windows proxy settings and required a direct connection.

Hopefully, this article can help somebody who has the same error. At least, this introduces a possibility that the issue is in the server side; from the client side, we may not have enough power to control it.