title: MySQL Unable to connect to remote host
body: <p>I am just wasting too much time with this issue. My final goal is to change the collation of the Amazon RDS DB from latin to utf8. To accomplish that, there is a lot of information out there, and yet, non of that has worked for me.</p>
  
  <p>First of all I tried to prompt mysql:</p>
  
  <pre><code>mysql -h ###.###.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com -p --port=3306
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but it raise an <code>ERROR 2003 (HY000):  Can't connect to MySQL server on '###.###.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com' (60)</code></p>
  
  <p>If I try using telnet:</p>
  
  <pre><code>telnet ###.###.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com 3306
  Trying 54.###.##.##...
  telnet: connect to address 54.###.##.##: Operation timed out
  telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Looking at the <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/UserGuide/GettingStarted.AuthorizeAccess.html" rel="nofollow">aws.docs</a> says that I have to authorize access to my cache cluster. But I could't get that far. I didn't know what to put on the <code>Port range</code>and <code>Source</code> by trying to add a new <code>Custom TCP rule</code> for my <code>default security group</code>. So I ended following <a href="http://bdunagan.com/2011/09/29/converting-mysql-from-latin1-to-utf8/" rel="nofollow">this tutorial using mysqldump</a> but I have the same connection problem as using >mysql </p>
  
  <p>Any help would be really appreciated!  </p>