Port Forwarding

[falcon409]

One time, a long long time ago, I had all the necessary ports for Flight Sim forwarded. That was then. . .this is now. I have changed MB's, OS, HDD's and a few other things since then and now, despite what my setup says for the Linksys Router, none of the ports are open and I'm at a loss as to how to fix the problem.

Does anyone have any insight into this problem in general and is it possible that Win7 is part of the problem?:isadizzy:

[scottmm73]

Win 7 may have a firewall stopping the traffic. Also consider Windows Defender if Win 7 has it.

[falcon409]

Win 7 may have a firewall stopping the traffic. Also consider Windows Defender if Win 7 has it.
Yea, I turned both of those off after the first time I ran the port open tester. . .no joy!

[DB93]

I don't know much about port forwarding, and I'm not running Win7 (Vista64 here), but I do remember that when I set it up on my old router for my 360, that I had to hard-set an ip address on the 360 and then configure the ports on the router to go to that ip. I'm just throwing this out there, but when you swapped out motherboards/reinstalled, did you remember to manually reconfigure the ip address on your PC to match the one that the ports are being forwarded to?

I haven't even tried FSX online, but the router I use now is just set to uPnP with no ports forwarded (360, 3 PCs, 2 PS3s, Wii, 2 DS and my laptop all could need any given port at any given time) and everything seems to work fine for all my other online gaming needs (again, I've never even tried FSX online, so my online gaming experience refers to the consoles and Lord of the Rings Online on the PCs.)

I can't say if you've already verified the ip address on your pc, so I'm just throwing it out there as something that could easily be overlooked during reinstalls.

Good luck, I hope you get things sorted. :)

[falcon409]

. . . . .motherboards/reinstalled, did you remember to manually reconfigure the ip address on your PC to match the one that the ports are being forwarded to?. . . . . . .
I can't say if you've already verified the ip address on your pc, so I'm just throwing it out there as something that could easily be overlooked during reinstalls.

Hmmmmmmm, (he said, stroking his chin. . . ."I wonder"), lol. Gonna check that straight away DB. . .thanks

[DB93]

Hmmmmmmm, (he said, stroking his chin. . . ."I wonder"), lol. Gonna check that straight away DB. . .thanks

Well I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you that that's all it is. Good luck! :)

[falcon409]

Ok,

Here's a quick peek at what I found:
What the Router setup calls the "Start IP Address is 192.168.1.100" and I had been told a few years ago that when I set up the port forwarding, not to use that exact address, but to bump that last number to 101 or 102 because it's actually a range of 50 combinations. Soooooo, my ports were being forwarded to 192.168.1.102.

After your suggestion, I went back and ran "ipconfig" from the DOS prompt and the IP address 192.168.1.100 was there. So that part was still correct. I just took a chance and rest all the ports to forward to that IP and now everything is as it should be. I ran the port test utility and all the ports are open.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[DB93]

I'm glad to hear you got it working. :) Just remember that the DHCP server is what's assigning the .100 address to your pc automatically, and as a result, the ip address on your pc *could* change on a reboot, especially if another device connects to your network while your pc is shut off. In that situation, your port forwarding would stop working again, as your pc would have a different address (for example, while your pc is off, another networked device connects to the router, and the router winds up assigning .100 to that device, then when your pc reboots, you could wind up with .101 as your address.)

To prevent that from happening, you can do the following:

Hard-set an ip address on your pc that is outside of the range of addresses that the DHCP server assigns (for example, 192.168.1.160, since the DHCP server will not give out an address higher than 192.168.1.150 because of the way it's currently configured by your screenshots.) Then go to your port-forwarding page, and forward the ports to the hard-set ip address from your pc.

In most cases, your pc will get back the same ip address it had the last time it was connected to the network, however using DHCP to obtain an automatic ip address whenever the computer connects to the network does run the risk of address changes that will 'break' your port-forwarding until you either get the old ip address back on your pc, or until you change the forwarded ports on the router (again) to reflect the new address.

Just something I wanted you to be aware of when using DHCP to obtain your ip address, should you run into port-forwarding issues in the future. :)

Anyhow, I'm just glad you got it working. :)

[falcon409]

Some good info there DB, I may do just that to ensure I don't have to continually recheck the open ports. Thanks!!

[Henry]

Pardon my ignorance but what is port forwarding?
what does it do?
H:isadizzy:

[DB93]

No problem, falcon, I'm just glad you got everything working again, and just wanted to be sure you were aware of the issues that could arise from using DHCP for getting your PC's ip address. Anyhow, just glad that the info pointed you in the right direction to get everything up and working again. :)

[falcon409]

Pardon my ignorance but what is port forwarding?
what does it do?
H:isadizzy:
Henry, I'm pretty sure that unless you do a lot of Multiplayer Flying, port forwarding isn't necessary. Having said that, if you do "any" multiplayer flights you'll have to forward (open for communication) certain ports to allow for cross communication between the server you're on and the other players. Not forwarding the correct ports can cause some folks to get booted and others to not be able to connect at all.

[DB93]

Pardon my ignorance but what is port forwarding?
what does it do?
H:isadizzy:

Hi Henry,

I'll try and give you a down and dirty overview of port-forwarding.

Basically, when you play a game online, a series of ports are used by the game to commuicate with others that are playing. However, the ip address that the game will use online, is the one assigned to your modem by your internet provider, and not the one on your PC end. When you're using a router to 'split' your internet with other internet-enabled devices, the router doesn't know which ports need to be sent to which ip address on the local network, so port-forwarding allows you to define which ip address should get the traffic when it hits a specified port on the router.

Most modern routers and PCs are uPnP (Universal Plug and Play) which allow the pc (or other uPnP internet-enabled device) to request that the ports are forwarded automatically when the device needs them, which typically doesn't require much, if any additional configuration on the router end (typically, you just need to make sure uPnP is turned on, on the router side of things.)

At the end of the day, port-forwarding is like a phone number with a bunch of extensions, so when an application tries to 'call' a certain extension (port), the router needs to know what 'office' (pc) to forward the 'call' to. The router acts like a phone operator, and port-forwarding is a table that the operator uses to know what 'extension' (port) goes to which 'office' (internet-enabled device like your pc.)

Hope that helps explain what port-forwarding does and what it's for, at least that's probably the best way that I can try to explain it. :)

[falcon409]

Yea, what DB93 said, lol.

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

It is important to remember that the ISP's DHCP server will issue an IP address to your broadband Modem; that IP is only used for the for the WAN/ Internet side of your connection.

The Modem's built-in DHCP server will then issue a different IP address to your Router (Network Address Translation aka "NAT") for use only on the LAN side of your connection.


IF that Modem is instead in the "bridge mode", and your Router is doing its own direct login to the ISP (recommended configuration for an additional layer of network security), it will be the Router that is assigned an IP used for the WAN/ Internet side of your connection.


The Router of course then will, via its own built-in DHCP server, issue a different IP address to your computer (via Network Address Translation aka "NAT") for use only on the LAN side of your connection.


BTW: Most Routers will tend to consistently assign a recurrent numeric IP address to a specific computer always on the same physical RJ-45 port jack even to the extent that the TCP/IP 4th octet is the same string (ex: 192.168.0.100 based on obscure networking magic.

Technically IP addresses in a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol ("DHCP") setting are supposed to change each time a device reboots or logs in; yet at the Router level, one's computer often ends up with that same IP on the inside / LAN side of the Router.

If your Router has even a rudimentary hardware firewall and does its own direct login to your ISP's DHCP server, that LAN side recurrent computer IP address is OK to use without the (IMHO) added headache of assigning a fixed IP address to your computers on the LAN side... the outside world will not likely ever be able to get in that far to mess with you (...but it is still best to use an additional software firewall, and test one's Internet / network security at http://www.grc.com/default.htm ).


As far as the use of online multi-player for FS goes, one is usually logging in on a server via the servers own permanently assigned WAN / Internet side IP address and Port # to set up communications.

Most gaming servers I am familiar with do not require port forwarding to be set up; however requirements for Port Forwarding is often seen with some peer-to-peer (ex: "Torrent") networks.


FYI: There are some hardware device and model-specific tutorials on how to do Port Forwarding at... you guessed it... portforward.com:

http://portforward.com/


Once one has internet access via the Point -to- Point Protocol Over Ethernet ("PPPOE") in Windows, one normally only has to set up FS9 in the multi-player menu to connect.

For FSX, most servers (ex: FSAddon) use the FSHostClient software for multi-player connections


Hope some of this might be of help in your endeavors ! :mixedsmi:

GaryGB

[Henry]

thanks for the info db93 now thats my terms
appreciate it
H:guinness: