Connection test working on laptop, failing on desktop

[Gohma]

Got kind of a weird issue occurring. I've got a fully-licensed Fantasy Grounds on both my laptop and my desktop, both connected to the same router with the same static IP and the same ports open and excepted in the firewall. They have the same modules, extensions and rulesets. The only discrepancy is that recently, out of the blue, my desktop has failed to give me a successful host connection; my laptop remains able to host, but isn't able to do so as effectively as my desktop due to lesser RAM. Naturally I'm not trying to use both my laptop and my desktop at the same time, and there shouldn't be any conflict with the license so long as I'm not using the program on both simultaneously. The port forwarding works on the laptop so long as the internal addresses match, but even when I change the settings to match the internal address of the desktop, the connection fails. I've tried just about everything, including uninstalling and reinstalling the program on my desktop, but it still won't host a connection. I'm pretty stumped, especially since it was working perfectly until just recently.

Any advice?

[Nylanfs]

You can't have the same static IP to different computers on your network. Give them different static IP's.

[midas]

Nylanfs is correct that you can't have the same IP on both machines, though from a basic standpoint it's technically possible as long as they're not both connected to the network at the same time. However some routers can have problems with this as they will keep an ARP table showing what MAC addresses are communicating with it and what IP addresses it sees those communications from.

For stable connections you'll want to ensure that any device on the network has a unique IP address, either statically assigned or via DHCP. This can obviously cause issues with port forwarding, but if you need to host games on both machines then you'll want to either change which IP you're forwarding port 1802 to when needed (point it at your desktop when you're hosting games there, to your laptop when you're hosting games there). This would be the easiest as that setting is easily and quickly changed in your router.

The other option would be to use a different port when using it on your laptop (which sounds like will be the less frequent scenario). You can change the port by adding a switch to the command line when you launch the program (your players will need to do this as well when they connect to you while hosting on your laptop). For example if you wanted to listen on port 1880:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Fantasy Grounds\FantasyGrounds.exe" -p1880

[Gohma]

Okay, sorry to return to this after such a long pause, but I'm still having problems. I actually misspoke the first time: both my machines do have different static IPs. The issue still stands that the laptop succeeds in providing a host connection while the desktop shows a failure. I can switch the IP address I'm forwarding within the router settings from one to the other and the result will be the same every time. Considering this is such a recent problem that only started within the last month or so, I'm just very baffled as to what could have possibly caused such a drastic change. I even set up a new router today, and without modifying anything on my laptop, it'll still host a game if I forward to its address, but not my desktop. I'm almost certain at this point that there's something affecting my desktop or its version of FG directly.

[Andraax]

You probably have a firewall on the desktop blocking access to FG.

[Gohma]

I'm fairly certain it's not the firewall? Like I said, the issue is very recent, and nothing about my firewall settings were changed. I also have the program excepted on both my system's firewall and my anti-virus.

[dulux-oz]

I don't know if this will help or not, or if you have considered this or not, but I've noticed that under Windows10 when Windows Updates come through sometimes - sometimes - settings can get changed. I've gotten into the habit recently when thinsg start "going haywire" of actually checking, not assuming, that settings were what I thought that were, even if it seems "impossible" for them to be changed.

As I said, I don't know if this helps or not, but I hope it does :)

Cheers

[Gohma]

Hmmm, okay, that's a fair assumption, and it would definitely explain a lot of that were true since I only recently upgraded my desktop. I'll go back into all those settings again and thoroughly double-check, hopefully that'll fix it.

[Gohma]

Looks like what worked was restoring my firewall's default settings, then adding the inbound/outbound rules for the port again. I'm glad that got figured out, but man, what a giant hassle to get there! Thanks everyone who offered a hand with helping me out here, you guys are cool dudes. :o

[dulux-oz]

Glad you got things sorted :)

Cheers