How can I improve this exception retry scenario?

Question

I have a web service method I am calling which is 3rd party and outside of my domain. For some reason every now and again the web service fails with a gateway timeout. Its i

Answer 1

All of the answers so far assume that the reaction to any exception should be to retry the operation. This is a good assumption right up until it's a false assumption. You could easily be retrying an operation that is damaging your system, all because you didn't check the exception type.

You should almost never use a bare "catch", nor "catch (Exception ex). Catch a more-specific exception - one you know you can safely recover from.