Connectivity problems

[HalC]

Hello Folks,
I've run into an odd situation, and hope that someone here knows where I should begin to look where it comes to resolving the issue...

To wit:

I've had two people who can connect to my PC from theirs without any issues, but when I have a third person try to connect for the first time, he is unable to connect. He in turn was able to have some help setting up, and the person who set him up was able to connect to him, and he can connect to the person that helped him. So the perplexing issue becomes one of "Why" and "What am I doing wrong at my end?"

Help?

Thanks,
Hal

[HalC]

I almost forgot to add this:

I can connect to him. But he can't connect to me.

That is what makes this so perplexing!

[damned]

HalC I may have spoken with your other party earlier today.
I suggest you do a tracert to his IP address and he do one to your IP address and see what differences there might be - they will be in reverse order and only the first few and last few entries will be relevant.
You can pm them to me or email - your other half has my address.

[ddavison]

1. Do either of you receive any error messages in chat when this happens?

2. What sort of license do each of the parties have (you, the two successful players and the unsuccessful player)?

3. Can the player connect with direct IP connection using your external IP address?

4. Is the player connecting from outside your network or from inside your network?

[HalC]

HalC I may have spoken with your other party earlier today.
I suggest you do a tracert to his IP address and he do one to your IP address and see what differences there might be - they will be in reverse order and only the first few and last few entries will be relevant.
You can pm them to me or email - your other half has my address.

I ran the Tracert command in cmd.exe and was able to get some activity. Out of 30 "attempts" (or lines?), request timed out were the responses from line 12 onwards. The command I used was:

C:\>tracert ##.###.#.# where the #'s were the target IP address (don't know if I should keep them hidden on the internet, and figure it is better safe than sorry).

I'm going to have to revisit the old DOS commands to see if I can redirect the results of the DOS command directly to a text file. GOD has been YEARS since I last used DOS commands from the console! :)

[damned]

you can PM them to me. we will need them from both ends to be useful.

tracert w.x.y.z > %userprofile%\desktop\tracert.txt

or you can select the text in the dos window and copy it with your mouse (possibly some right clicking involved depending on Win version).

[HalC]

1. Do either of you receive any error messages in chat when this happens?

2. What sort of license do each of the parties have (you, the two successful players and the unsuccessful player)?

3. Can the player connect with direct IP connection using your external IP address?

4. Is the player connecting from outside your network or from inside your network?

Hi ddavision,
1) He's not been able to connect, so I don't think he's seeing any error messages. When I connected with him, I didn't see any error messages at my end.
2) I've got the Ultimate, my two players used Free (demo) and the person whom I'm having difficulty reaching me, is using a player's license.
3) That's what we were using - direct IP addresses. I've never used the alias one (wouldn't really know how to)
4) The player who is having issues, is outside my network. I'm using Roadrunner as are the two who can connect with me (we all within 20 minute's drive of each other). So we're using the same ISP.


For what it is worth, a FINE gentleman helped me set up properly a while back. Subsequently, I got a new McAfee anti-virus program with bells and whistles beyond what I originally had. When the new McAfee was installed, it blew all of my previous settings to hell, and I had to work with a McAfee technician to try and get Fantasy Grounds 2 functional again. Once we did that, the other two players could connect. I can't help but wonder if it wasn't set up properly.

[HalC]

Hi All,

It would appear that the issue stems from McAfee Total Protection. The fix was to go Firewall, find the setting for FG2, change incoming and outgoing to "open to all devices" and turn off the netguard. Once that was done, the other individual could get on.

Now for the screwy part...

While using the original "OLD" settings, yet a third person from outside of the country I'm in, was able to port in without any hindrance. So, for what ever reason, the issue stemmed from between my location and this other individual's location to where something remains "unique" between us that is not standard. Thus far...

Out of four attempts to connect to my machine, only 1 could not, the other three could. With the fix mentioned above, now all four can.

Hope this helps.

[ddavison]

That is indeed very strange. I would not have expected that at all. I'm glad to hear that you managed to get it all sorted out.

[HalC]

That is indeed very strange. I would not have expected that at all. I'm glad to hear that you managed to get it all sorted out.

What I almost want to do?

Any time I get a new person to connect to my system, I am tempted to reset the original parameters for FG2 in the firewall, and see if the new person can get through or not, and keep track of the following:

What is their ISP
What is their operating system
What firewall are they using
What anti-virus are they using


If I can document the oddities, then perhaps a pattern will begin to emerge.

[midas]

I'm wondering if McAfee was blocking traffic from the trouble user's IP range for some reason.

[HalC]

I'm wondering if McAfee was blocking traffic from the trouble user's IP range for some reason.

Full explanation? :) I'll easily confess ignorance when it is correctable ;)

[midas]

Full explanation? :) I'll easily confess ignorance when it is correctable ;)

It's based on this:


The fix was to go Firewall, find the setting for FG2, change incoming and outgoing to "open to all devices" and turn off the netguard. Once that was done, the other individual could get on.

Typically in a firewall you can tell it not just to allow traffic, but you can tell it *where* to allow it from. For example, if I wanted to I could set my firewall to allow incoming traffic on port 1802 (or 80, or whatever), but only from my connection at work.

Since the setting you changed was to make the rule work for all devices, I'm wondering if that means that somewhere within McAfee was some kind of IP address blacklist. So your friends were connecting fine, but that one problem user was coming from an internet address that McAfee didn't allow. Maybe his ISP was blacklisted somewhere and McAfee was by default not allowing any incoming connections from that network.

I'm not familiar with McAfee's firewall software, and this type of behavior isn't typical, but given what you did to fix it that's the only thing that came to my mind regarding a possible cause.

[HalC]

Gotcha. I wondered myself if perhaps his Virus protection system was protecting itself from Roadrunner.com, because I think there are a few spammers that were blacklisted from RR.COM in the past. That would have explained why he could connect to the gent in Australia, but not to me. People using Roadrunner wouldn't blacklist others from Roadrunner, which would have explained why my friends could connect, and the other guy couldn't...

Until the guy from Australia could connect to my PC without any issue.

So...

A (Me) could connect to B, but B couldn't connect to me.

B (the other United States guy) could connect to C and have C connect to him, no problem.

C (the guy in Australia) could connect to A and to B no problem.

It wasn't until we changed McAfee total protection plan to permit B to finally be able to connect to A. Strange to be sure!

[damned]

I was able to connect to both the GM and the players computers when they hosted a game.
They could both connect to me.
I created a VPN connection for the GM and the player was able to connect.
Macafee was just being a PITA and was blocking this connection.
Disabling Macfee from doing its advanced whatevers on the FantasyGrounds.exe for any connections allowed the player to connect.