Disconnected with Host Reconnected with Host

[Rhenny]

Hi all,

My son is trying to get into my game and for some reason he has a tough time connecting. After a little while, it connects and then disconnects. Then it reconnects. Then it disconnects. Then it reconnects...and this alternates every 10-20 seconds forever.

I tried adding FG to the outbound and inbound rules in the firewall, but still no solid connection.

Any ideas?

[Trenloe]

Are either of you running on WiFi, or even on 3G/4G wireless hotspot?

If either of you are on WiFi try to get closer to the WiFi router and get a good connection. If you can use a network cable to connect your computer to the router do that.

If you're on a wireless hotspot then make sure you have the best reception possible for the wireless 3G/4G connection.

[Rhenny]

I'm pretty sure the wireless connection is strong.

[Trenloe]

If your son connects then you have the port forwarding etc. correct. Disconnections will be because of network issues or something occasionally blocking the connection (which is very rare, as most security apps will block a connection 100% of the time).

It's basically going to be a connection issue somewhere - you can try a number of things:

Reboot both of your PCs.
Reboot the internet routers each of you are using.
Run speed tests from speedtest.net to make sure that there is a good, consistent internet connection.

[damned]

is your son the only one connecting?
is he the only one experiencing the issues?

on his (and for good measure yours) open 2 CMD prompts and in one enter:

ping 8.8.8.8 -t
and in the other ping the router (gateway) ip address in the same way.

you should see less than 1% drop/timeout/failure rate.
more than this indicates a poor network connection.

[ddavison]

Are you both connecting from inside the same network (behind your firewall)? Are you using the alias for your son to connect to you or is he using your internal IP address. The latter would be recommended. Just to clarify, is the firewall port routing set to route to just your host computer and not somehow set up for both you and your son? Is UPnP set as on for your router?

If you are both behind the same firewall, I'm wondering if UPnP would somehow cause the port forwarding to continually shift from the two FG apps running inside. It's just a lose theory.

[Rhenny]

If your son connects then you have the port forwarding etc. correct. Disconnections will be because of network issues or something occasionally blocking the connection (which is very rare, as most security apps will block a connection 100% of the time).

It's basically going to be a connection issue somewhere - you can try a number of things:

Reboot both of your PCs.
Reboot the internet routers each of you are using.
Run speed tests from speedtest.net to make sure that there is a good, consistent internet connection.


I did a full reboot of everything and it seems to have worked. Thanks.

I'm glad it worked. I just have to remember to reboot if I'm having any trouble. Keeping my fingers crossed.

@damned and @ddavison thanks for your suggestions too.

[Rhenny]

I did a full reboot as Trenloe suggested, and it seems to work for now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

@damned and @ddavison, thanks for your suggestions too. You fellas are very responsive. Cheers.