Sudden Connection Issues

[SilverStud]

Hi there, sorry to be a bother.

Just a few days ago, I ran a session of D&D using Fantasy Grounds. It was great, everything worked smoothly.

Then yesterday it stopped working. I was very confused and upset, and tried googling it. Advice was to check my Connection Test, which turned out to return FAILURE.

What on earth could have happened to make things change in only a couple days? I've read different threads where the OP mentions being gone for a while, or a long gap between sessions. But for me it was legit a gap of like 4 days.

I'm not getting anywhere with the solutions I've found in threads, so hopefully one of you guys here can help me out.

[Zacchaeus]

If it worked before and doesn't now then the most likely cause is that your IP address on your computer has changed and your Port Forward rule is pointing at your old IP address.

If you had to portt forward then go back into the rule you created and edit it to point at the new IP address of your computer.

If you didn't have to port forward then try rebooting your router.

Also check that your Network is still set to private and that you have an exception for FG in your Antivirus. Check also that there aren't multiple rules in your AV (Windows Defender has a habit of doing this). If there are then delete them all and create a new one.

[LordEntrails]

The most common things are Windows update has set your network connection to public, et it to private (work or home).
Second most common thing is your router has re-assigned your computer a new internal IP address. If you setup port forwarding, go re-validate that and reboot your router.
Occasionally, your ISP will have changed your network on their side and may now be congregating your IP or have switched you to IPv6. But that is harder to diagnose.

If you can't resolve, then take a look at the linked post and reply back here with the results of the 7 questions;
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?47051-Fantasy-Grounds-Connections-Explained

EDIT: I may have been nija'd by Mr Z, but at least I beat our AI!

[Trenloe]

What have you looked at so far?

Is your network connection on your computer set to Private?
Have you checked that the IP address of your computer hasn't changed and that the port forwarding rule on your Internet router points to the right IP address?
Have you checked that TCP port 1802 and FantasyGrounds.exe are allowed in all of your security/anti-virus software?

What else have you tried?

[SilverStud]

So in the firewall, I'm creating a "port rule"?
27053

[Trenloe]

EDIT: I may have been nija'd by Mr Z, but at least I beat our AI!
Equal on time - you only beat do to alphabetic sorting!

[LordEntrails]

So in the firewall, I'm creating a "port rule"?
27053
Yes, but if you had not done that before you probably don't need to do it now. First check your connection type, second try rebooting your router.

[Trenloe]

Also, in case your ISP has made some changes. From a command prompt, run tracert 8.8.8.8 and paste the results here.

[SilverStud]

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.117.217.1
3 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms 10.224.253.13
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 28 ms 33 ms 28 ms ae-2-3613.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.69.160.73]
6 37 ms 27 ms 29 ms 4.68.70.162
7 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 108.170.245.97
8 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 209.85.254.167
9 26 ms 29 ms 25 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

[damned]

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.117.217.1
3 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms 10.224.253.13
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 28 ms 33 ms 28 ms ae-2-3613.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.69.160.73]
6 37 ms 27 ms 29 ms 4.68.70.162
7 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 108.170.245.97
8 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 209.85.254.167
9 26 ms 29 ms 25 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

Hops 2 and 3 are problematic and may point to what Trenloe suggests.
Hoever please confirm that you have checked your Network Adapter is set to a Private Profile and that you have rebooted the Router.

[Trenloe]

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.117.217.1
3 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms 10.224.253.13
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 28 ms 33 ms 28 ms ae-2-3613.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.69.160.73]
6 37 ms 27 ms 29 ms 4.68.70.162
7 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 108.170.245.97
8 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 209.85.254.167
9 26 ms 29 ms 25 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.
Steps 2 and 3 are private IP addresses - this more than likely indicates that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) has started sharing the public IP address with others - which is becoming more and more common. Unfortunately, this means that the port forwarding required by FG won't work in this setup, without assistance from the ISP.

Give your ISP a call (I think they're CableOne?) and say that you need TCP port 1802 port forwarded to you for peer-to-peer gaming. See what they say. You may need to pay more for a static public IP address or they may be able to set you up. If they can't you can look into the alternatives mentioned here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43607-Port-Forward-Alternatives

[SilverStud]

Thank you so much for the help! Restarting the whole setup worked immediately.

[Trenloe]

Thank you so much for the help! Restarting the whole setup worked immediately.
Glad you got working, but that’s weird based off the tracert you sent before. Can you do another one and post what is shows here? I’m concerned your ISP may be making dynamic changes and you may get this issue again...

[damned]

Glad you got working, but that’s weird based off the tracert you sent before. Can you do another one and post what is shows here? I’m concerned your ISP may be making dynamic changes and you may get this issue again...

The private IPs are a good indicator but not a guaranteed one.
One of the Qs I ask in the FG Connections Explained thread is whether the External IP shown in FG is the same as the one shown on the Routers WAN interface.
I see a lot of shared IP addresses but I also see a lot of connections where the ISP has used private addressing on all their internal equipment but have a Public IP on the customers device.

[SilverStud]

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 10.117.217.1
3 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 10.224.253.13
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms ae-2-3613.edge1.Seattle3.Level3.net [4.69.160.73]
6 28 ms 26 ms 26 ms 4.68.70.162
7 27 ms 28 ms 28 ms 108.170.245.97
8 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms 209.85.254.167
9 30 ms 27 ms 27 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

Here's the new tracert, Trenloe