I have created a webservice to allow remote users of a desktop app to
pull data off my web server. It works fine on my laptop, which I'm
using as both the client and the web server. When I put it on the
production server, my webservice calls are not getting through. It
waits a while, then returns a gateway timeout error to the browser.

I assume it is a matter of having the right port opened on the server
or something, but I have no idea what port that might be. Or maybe
something else is going on. I am not the network admin here, and I
don't know much about how our server, router, and firewall is
configured. But I don't even know what to ask the network admin,
because I don't understand how webservices make their calls except that
they use SOAP and that the code is autogenerated by Visual Studio.
What I need is some sort of list of things to check or a good
explanation (is there a white paper somewhere?) of what is going on
behind the scenes. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.