According to a Google search for site:httpd.apache.org httpd_can_network_connect the following fact isn't mentioned anywhere in the Httpd documentation. I think, this should be changed. A properly configured proxy request can fail on Red Hat Enterprise, Fedora, CentOS, and other SE-Linux based systems can fail, if the SE boolean httpd_can_network_connect prevents network access to the proxy server. If that is the case, the error_log will contain a message like AH01114: HTTP: failed to make connection to backend: 127.0.0.1 Accordingly, the end user will see something like http status 503: Service unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Mitigation: 1.) Check the status of the httpd_can_network_connect boolean: $ sudo getsebool httpd_can_network_connect httpd_can_network_connect --> off 2.) If the value is "on", then nothing must be changed. Otherwise, change the value with $ sudo setsebool httpd_can_network_connect 1 $ sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1 (The first line will change the current runtime only. The -P flag makes the change permanent.) Reference: http://sysadminsjourney.com/content/2010/02/01/apache-modproxy-error-13permission-denied-error-rhel/