Tweaker, we are using SP2 but behind a router: windows firewall is off, there are no software firewalls.
I have gone into the network connection on the main PC and added the services for LFS there as well - have tried using its own IP address, as well as that of the router.
We've followed the instructions to set new services in router, and router firewall knows to forward those services to the ipaddress of the "host" PC.
That seems to work OK, and we can connect to that host using a second pc behind the firewall - but only by entering the specific IP address of the host PC. We can't make it "go out to the Internet - then come back again".
It did work once today, in that when I was setting up my PC a couple of drivers managed to jump in ! BUt I can't do it myself, so to speak.
What I mean is: Main PC "hosting" multiplayer game. Laptop looking to join that specific game either by choosing from lfsworld or by typing name in "join specific game". In either case, I get the clientconnect error mentioned above. (Perhaps its normal not to be able to connect in this way?)
Host PC is S2 licensed, hosting a demo game. Laptop is demo.
Any clues welcomed, as we seem to have exhausted the help / links from this forum !
Make sure you are running identical client and server versions (patch U) and also make sure that it's not a client in demo mode connecting to an S2 server or vice versa.
A simple test:
Try telnetting to the PC using his local IP address. For example, from a command prompt:
telnet 192.168.1.10 63392 (or telnet localhost 63392)
where the local address is 192.168.1.10 and the LFS server port is 63392.
You should try telnetting from the same pc that hosts the server (telnet localhost, or 127.0.0.1), from another PC in the LAN (using the private PC address) and from outside (using the public IP address of the router, gather that from www.whatismyip.com if you don't know it, it will give the address of the router NATting your computer).
If you're able to connect to the host, the telnet screen will go blank awaiting input. Hit enter a few times and you'll exit to the prompt.
The localhost test should have no problems at all.
Same for the LAN test, if the connection fails there's some firewall issue.
If telnet from the outside fails, recheck port forwarding on the router.
What if everything works? Mmm . No idea yet, but at least you'll exclude some blatant firewall/routing problem.
Is it possible to run lfs on a laptop as a host server behind a router, at the same time, on a pc, behind the same router, connect to the laptop (host) via the master server?
At the moment this is causing problems!
Any assistance greatly appreciated.
I might try in the weekend, if it's not too late, with a setup almost equal to yours (laptop, desktop and router), using a dlink router. I can't do that before saturday, unfortunately. I'll let you know.
After spending some time trying to figure out what was wrong with my wireless dlink router, having discovered that the hardware revision of my router is VERY old, having discovered that there's no firmware update for that revision, having decided not to buy any dlink product anymore, since I'm badly needing a router that does proper forwarding without making me mad I'm going out to fetch a pair of routers for testing.
Problem is, the router doesn't care at all about port forwarding and I'm not bothered at all to call dlink for support since Italian forums are full of complaints about that router. It's dlink loss, not mine, since the answers I read in the forums are extremely unpleasant, and in this case they are not losing just a single customer since I decide what to buy for the firm I work for and for the customers of my firm. I'll be back later to let you know the results, know I've got to get my hands on some better working router. Later
Ok, I ditched the DLink G624T and I brought home a Netgear DG834G Adsl wireless router. Configuration (with no particular additional security enforcement at the moment) was straightforward. It took me ten minutes to setup DSL, wireless, DHCP reservations and firewall rules for LFS opening both 63392 UDP and TCP ports, then I fired up the dedicated server on my laptop. I tested that using the ingame server list, connecting directly from the LAN address, joining a specific game giving the LFS host name and from the ingame server list. Everything was fine. The only way to have a ClientConnect: connect failed error from my desktop was disabling the port forwarding on the router and thus cutting the possibility to reach the dedicated host on my laptop from the WAN address. My test server, after a server list refresh, didn't appear anymore since the server couldn't be reached. It could obviously still be reached via LAN, of course.
How about LFSWorld? Well, that's the funny bit, although the behaviour is quite obvious to my eyes, and definitely not wrong... The server is listed although it's not reachable at all! It may sound strange that a server that could never be reached is listed in LFSWorld, but it does make sense since the master server needs to know about the existence of a host, not about his reachability. It's not its task, it's a client task since some clients could reach the LFS host although the master server itself could not reach it, for example because of routing problems. There are also some other good reasons but I won't discuss them here. Refreshing the server list from LFS with port forwarding rules enabled showed up my test host again. So, if you have to troubleshoot routing or network issues, do not rely upon host list on lfsworld, you'll have to rely upon the ingame server list. Feel free to ask if there's something unclear, I'll do my best to help out, although you may expect - sooner or later - to see this thread moved by moderators/administrators to the Technical Assistance section, where it should belong.
I also managed to control my host reachability via an external host, and it was fine. In case you're interested, the host is called Wantest and has pass as password. It should be empty, unless I do some testing. I'll leave it up for a while (a few hours), and then I'll tear it down since I don't need it at the moment.
I have the problem of going to multiplayer then join specific game then I type in the name but it says connecting to host for a secont then says connect failed? WHAT TO DO plz help
. No idea yet, but at least you'll exclude some blatant firewall/routing problem.
