Players unable to join

[Lurch0181]

I've followed the port forwarding directions and am successful in my test connection (see attached). But my friends are unable to join my game.

[damned]

Welcome Lurch0181

Have you started/loaded the campaign? The players should be able to connect with your external ip address OR the alias once your campaign is running.

Make sure they have a username in the first field.

I just successfully connected to your table - and I see a swag of players :)

Some advice... if you are new to this on FG - get rid of most of those extensions until you have the base sorted out... you also have a bunch of themes that conflict with each other :)

[Lurch0181]

Thank you Damned! However, my two friends who are trying to connect are both getting "unable to connect to host" errors. I'm at a loss on what to do.

[LordEntrails]

Thank you Damned! However, my two friends who are trying to connect are both getting "unable to connect to host" errors. I'm at a loss on what to do.
Are they on the same network as you? Then they should be using your internal IP address, not the alias or external IP address.

What else can you tell us about them? Where are they? Where are you?

[Lurch0181]

Are they on the same network as you? Then they should be using your internal IP address, not the alias or external IP address.

What else can you tell us about them? Where are they? Where are you?

They are not on the same network, and are thus using my external IP address or alias. But we all live in the same city. We could all join the game hosted by one of them, but he isn't going to dm at the moment, they just can't join my game.

[damned]

Whats your Alias please?

[StoryWeaver]

1) Start by double checking your IP: https://whatismyipaddress.com/

2) Start up the FG server so the computer is listening for incoming pings or contacts.

3) Ping from an outside service to to see if you're getting though. Using your IP address from step 2, adding the default FG port used, 1802, at the end. Se example below. https://ping-test.org/
Using [Your IP address]:1802, ex. '209.85.255.255:1802'.

Ping Result 1:
If you're getting a reply (packages are returned) your server is responding, your router is accepting inbound connections via that port, your connection is working outbound.

If this is the case, they are probably entering the wrong alias/ip and/or password.

Ping Result 2:
If you lose all your packages, then there is a problem along the line there.

Most likely either you have not set things up correctly on the router or there is a firewall either on the router or your computer blocking incoming packages.

=====

For myself when I started out running games on FG. I had sporadic success with connections, some evenings it would work fine, others not, but restarting the router seemed to work most of the times.

Problem turned out being not having set up port forwarding for FG on the router to the correct port 1802 yet. Thereby the connection via the router kept getting blocked sometimes and sometimes not.
Even if it showed a good / green connection on the connection test, didn't mean that outside pinging via a third party test website would work.

However whenever an outside ping worked, the players could connect.

The good news is though, that once I set things up properly on the router, I've never had any connection issues since.

Good luck.

[Lurch0181]

Whats your Alias please?

It's in the attachment in my first post

[damned]

Hi Lurch0181

Sorry I forgot I tested joining your game already.
Either the players have:

1. Incorrectly entered the alias or WAN IP (maybe copy/pasted a space in there?)
2. not entered a player name
3. have a local firewall issue on their software
4. you have inadvertently activated a firewall rule against their IPs only
5. there is a routing issue between them and you

If its working for other players and not them you might need to troubleshoot those things above or install hamachi and have the players who cannot connect do the same and connect via hamachi while the others connect normally and stop chasing your tails?

[HoloGnome]

I am actually also having this problem at the moment, and it is a strange one. I went through all the debugging with the player who couldn't connect. It really made no sense...or so I thought. I know my setup works because I just ran FGCON and have never had any player connect issues. The player can do a full tracert to me with no problems and he can also connect to another FG GM friend, so I was scratching my head. Then, when I asked for his IP, I noticed that he was connecting via IPv6. I have an older router that doesn't support it. So, I am posting this comment here for you to check the following issue: player possibly using IPv6 and you being on IPv4, where the IPv6 traffic is not being passed through because of router issues -- either because it is unsupported or you are blocking IPv6. In the very least, it's something else to check. and/or be aware of, now that we are in the IPv6/v6 transitional gray area.

[Trenloe]

Fantasy Grounds Classic doesn't support IPv6, only IPv4.

There's been a few posts over the last couple of months where ISPs are rolling out IPv6 changes without informing their customers. Do a search for "comcast ipv6" from the site search link at the top of this page.

[HoloGnome]

Thanks - hadn't seen those posts. My hope would be that a newer router would do the right thing and dual-stack to translate to/from IPv6 on my IPv4 host. However, my current router doesn't handle IPv6 at all. So, the IPv6 traffic will be rejected and it probably has nothing to do with FG. The traffic never gets there because it is rejected at the router. Anyway, the point is that in the OP's problem, it is entirely possible there is an IPv6 gremlin at work, as is likely the case for me and my friend. I need to get a new router anyway, so I will do some experiments. I have kept my 15+-year-old WRT54G running, but it needs to retire. Maybe my friend still has IPv4 access. That would be the easiest solution. However, with IPv6, he is connecting to another friend's FG setup, so there must be some dual-stacking going on somewhere.

[HoloGnome]

For the benefit of anyone that may have an IPv6 issue, I did some more experiments with my IPv6 friend who couldn't connect to my IPv4 server.

I was able to get the FG connection working by doing the following:

1. I removed the IPv4-only wireless router from the equation (which was definitely blocking his traffic)
2. I connected directly to my primary Comcast IPv4/IPv6 router (which is actually a Netgear OEM)
3. On the router, I tried various options and the one that solved the problem was checking "Enable Unicast" under the LAN:IPv6 Setup tab. I also enabled the IPv6 firewall. The router had to reset itself after applying that change.
4. I am still running IPv4 DHCP on the LAN side (10.x.x.x) and my public address is still IPv4.
5. Windows thinks my home network (now changed from "Network 4" to "Network 6") has disconnected IPv6 functionality (which is probably true now that I am dual-stacking with Unicast on the router but not actually using IPv6...but I guess it also shows disconnected IPv6 on IPv4 networks. So...maybe hard to tell, except that it changed the Network name to Network 6, even though still IPv4).
6. After doing these things, my IPv6 friend was able to finally ping my IPv4 address successfully from a DOS window and can connect to my IPv4 FG server without any issues.

In all cases, my local FG test always showed SUCCESS.

edit: Interestingly, however, after making this change, canyouseeme.org:1802 no longer works. I'd have to do some more poking around to figure out why. I may need to set up additional forwarding or other firewall rule. I set up the standard 1802 port forward on the router, but something is blocking the non-FG client access. --> I need to recheck this the next time we connect. As in the PS below, I may have quit FG.

Anyway, turning on Unicast to dual-stack/tunnel seems to have solved the IPv6->IPv4 conversion issue. So, if the thread-starter has an IPv6 conflict, it looks like there might be a dual-stacking solution that does not involve trying to make FG Classic host games on an IPv6 host (which I guess doesn't work per Trenloe). The above will depend on whatever support the router provides...but Netgear is a common solution, both in the consumer and OEM business spaces.

Good luck! GAME ON!

ps. Oh...and when I want to host a game for him, I just hotwire to the Comcast router, and when I want to use wireless, I'm back to the IPv4 WRT54G.
pps. The problem with canyouseeme.org was probably that I had quit FG when I did the subsequent test. Seems OK now.

[Bidmaron]

Great detective work, Holognome. This last portion needs to be preserved in some sticky thread.

[HoloGnome]

My friend reconnected again last night. Most of our last session on 11/27 above was just debug to figure out HOW to connect, if at all possible.

Also, after setting "Unicast" on the router, I didn't want to reset my FG alias (and figured it wouldn't work, since the IP changed...and it didn't work last night). So, in my example above, I should emphasize that we used direct IP4 address to connect (which is him on FG and IP6 entering my IP4 address in FG to get to my server). But, it worked fine again for us last night and we could actually play.

[Lurch0181]

So Hemachi worked, all nice and easy like. Thanks for the help damned!

[KennyKatAtak]

Help!
DM - cable to router
DM player screen - cable to router
P1 - on mac connected wifi (same router)
P2 - windows connected wifi (same router)
P3 - windows connected wifi (same router)

DM logs on, success full test. DM player screen connects successfully. P1 connected successfully. P2 and P3 cant connect to host. P1 logs off; P2 can log on successfully but P1 cant connect now... WHY!?

[damned]

Welcome KennyKatAtak

If you are all on the same network have them all connect to the LAN address not the Alias or WAN address.

[KennyKatAtak]

Can you be more specific plz?

[LordEntrails]

Can you be more specific plz?
On the campaign launch screen FG shows the GM two IP addresses, one external and one internal. Players on the same network (router) should use the internal address.

[KennyKatAtak]

Ok so DM and DM-PS are internal, everyone else was using the external. So youre saying only 1 person can use the external if we are all local and to fix it so everyone can log in locally they all need to use the internal... right?

[LordEntrails]

Ok so DM and DM-PS are internal, everyone else was using the external. So youre saying only 1 person can use the external if we are all local and to fix it so everyone can log in locally they all need to use the internal... right?
No. Everyone on the same network should use the internal IP address. Everyone outside the host network should use the external IP. Their is no limit to the number of connections from either source.

[KennyKatAtak]

LordEntrails, I dont think youre understanding what im saying but thank you for trying to help!

[damned]

Everyone on the same network should use the LAN or Local IP address.

Please post the GMs LAN IP and the LAN IP of a computer on each of the Wifis.

Eg they will look something like 192.168.1.106
They will almost certainly start with 192.168 or 10.