Hosting a Server - I've tried it all
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UPDATE: The issue is with the connecting side (my friend) instead of the server. Thank you all for the help, we’re working on a solution.
Hello BMS Community,
After a lot of researching and trying out different ‘solutions’ myself, I’m pretty much out of options. I really hope someone can help me out.
My problem is this. I’m trying to run a Falcon BMS 4.33 U4 (IVC) server on my pc. Short conclusion, other people can’t connect. ‘What have you tried so far, brokpiloot?’, you might ask. Well, here we go.
I’ve portforwarded ports 2437 to 2438, 9989 to 9999 and 2934 to 2937. Individually. Pointing at my static IP, because my router requires a static ip to portforward.
EDIT: I now only opened UDP ports 2934 - 2935 and 9987 - 9989 UDP.
Now, let’s fire up the IVC Server.exe.
The server should be up and running, right? Which means, the ports should be open and connectable. However, a simple portcheck shows me:
So I tried something different, I pointed my qtorrent downloader to (listen to) port 9987 to see if it was a router problem. In this case, the port opened up:
I’m not a technical genius, so please correct me if I’m wrong; this means the problem isn’t with the portforwarding.
Furthermore, I disabled my Firewall; Windows & Bitdefender. No luck. I thought, maybe I can make the server listen on my static ip (192.168.2.15) instead of 0.0.0.0. With previous server issues, involving other games, this solved the problem. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a proper config file to do this, and I’m not smart enough to edit the server.exe myself. Perhaps I’m missing something.
I hope someone can help me out. Thanks for your time!
~ Brokpiloot
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First things first, you appear to be opening more ports than necessary.
From BMS-Manual page 84 MULTIPLAYER:
- BMS needs UDP ports 2934 and 2935 to be opened/forwarded.
- IVC needs UDP ports 9987 to 9989 to be opened/forwarded.
As you’re trying to host you will need these ports to be forwarded to your PC’s internal IP address, but only for UDP. TCP is not needed.
On most routers you can just set the range and be done with it. Your screenshot above looks like you’ve done them individually; is that a limitation of the router you’re using?
Now, back to what you call your static IP. Is that the 192.168.2.15 you posted? Do you have that internal IP address reserved in your router’s DHCP Reservation setup pages so that it always applies to your flight PC?
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Darkman, thanks for your reply!
I tried forwarding those ports using ranges; this didn’t solve the issue, and a different forum suggested forwarding the ports individually. I’ll use the range method from now on.
Furthermore I also noticed only UDP was necessary for certain ports. I thought it wouldn’t hurt opening both versions, just to be sure.192.168.2.15 is the static IP I assigned my computer through the LAN adapter settings. I also assigned my computers’s MAC address to this specific internal IP in my router’s settings (DHCP).
Thanks for you help so far, I appreciate it.
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192.168.2.15 is the static IP I assigned my computer through the LAN adapter settings.
Why?
I also assigned my computers’s MAC address to this specific internal IP in my router’s settings (DHCP).
This should be sufficient. The MAC address of your flight PC isn’t going to change, so all you need to do usually is reserve the internal IP address for that MAC address so it doesn’t change, forward the UDP ports to that internal IP address and you’re done.
Can I double-check that the internal IP address is 192.168.2.15, as all the routers I’ve ever used default to a number range of 192.168.0.xxx unless you specify otherwise?
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Why?
Force of habit; forwarding ports for previous situations forced me to specify a static ipv4 address in my network adapter. I will give it a try without this setting. This wasn’t a problem when forwarding ports for a torrent client, for example.
Can I double-check that the internal IP address is 192.168.2.15, as all the routers I’ve ever used default to a number range of 192.168.0.xxx unless you specify otherwise?
I believe this is correct. Every device on my network has this 192.168.2.xx address:
My current port-forward settings are as followed:
This is where I made a specific set of rules for an app, which I called BMS Serv. After that I applied this set of rules to my (static) ip:
Thanks for taking the time. We’re getting there.
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Understood. I’m not sure what the App thing does because if your router is forwarding all the UDP traffic on those ports to your flight PC it shouldn’t make any difference whether it’s a Game or Server but who knows?
Has anyone tried to connect to your BMS server since you made the recent changes?
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just to chime in; don’t for get about any software firewall that may be blocking access from outside.
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Understood. I’m not sure what the App thing does because if your router is forwarding all the UDP traffic on those ports to your flight PC it shouldn’t make any difference whether it’s a Game or Server but who knows?
Has anyone tried to connect to your BMS server since you made the recent changes?
We gave it another try a few minutes ago, unfortunately no success. Portforwarding is done correct, I believe.
just to chime in; don’t for get about any software firewall that may be blocking access from outside.
Thanks for the advice Badger, I had disabled my antivirus Firewall module but unfortunately no success…
Is there any possible way to change the ‘0.0.0.0’ ip to which the server listens and change this to my 192.168.2.15 ip?
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We gave it another try a few minutes ago, unfortunately no success. Portforwarding is done correct, I believe.
Can I double-check that the client/your friend is located remotely, i.e. not at your location on the same router?
Is there any possible way to change the ‘0.0.0.0’ ip to which the server listens and change this to my 192.168.2.15 ip?
Why?
All you need is 0.0.0.0 in the Connect to IP Address box/field, and 127.0.0.1 in the Dedicated IVC Server one. Connection Bandwidth shouldn’t affect this test (I just use ~80% of my upload bandwidth).
All your friend should need is your external IP address in both the Connect to IP Address box and the Dedicated IVC Server box. Ask him to just use 1024 for his Connection Bandwidth.
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Can I double-check that the client/your friend is located remotely, i.e. not at your location on the same router?
Yes, he is 100km away.
Why?
All you need is 0.0.0.0 in the Connect to IP Address box/field, and 127.0.0.1 in the Dedicated IVC Server one. Connection Bandwidth shouldn’t affect this test (I just use ~80% of my upload bandwidth).
All your friend should need is your external IP address in both the Connect to IP Address box and the Dedicated IVC Server box. Ask him to just use 1024 for his Connection Bandwidth.
I can host and connect to my comms + IVC server. The local network is fine, but incoming connections wont come through. He put my external ip address in both boxes and used the correct bandwidth. I find it strange; when I, for example, use the port 9988 for other programs the port magically opens up but when I use it for Falcon BMS 4.33 it stays closed all the way, even when the server is supposed to be ‘up’.
This logically points the source of my problems to the running server instead of my router/firewall. The reason I would bind the server to 192.168.2.5 instead of 0.0.0.0, is because I believe the (unguided) incoming connection might get mixed up along the way.(A theory.)
Like I mentioned before, I’m not a technical genius. I do appreciate the help a lot and please, correct me if I’m wrong. I believe I’ve gone through every possibility to solve this issue.
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Can you connect to your friend if he hosts?
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Can you connect to your friend if he hosts?
Unfortunately he can’t host. He can’t access his router to portforward, for security reasons.
We’ll give Hamachi a try. Both on the same ‘LAN network’ with the use of software, without portforwarding. Will report back if it works.
Feel free to keep suggesting other solutions!
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Yes, he is 100km away.
I can host and connect to my comms + IVC server. The local network is fine, but incoming connections wont come through. He put my external ip address in both boxes and used the correct bandwidth. I find it strange; when I, for example, use the port 9988 for other programs the port magically opens up but when I use it for Falcon BMS 4.33 it stays closed all the way, even when the server is supposed to be ‘up’.
This logically points the source of my problems to the running server instead of my router/firewall. The reason I would bind the server to 192.168.2.5 instead of 0.0.0.0, is because I believe the (unguided) incoming connection might get mixed up along the way.(A theory.)
Like I mentioned before, I’m not a technical genius. I do appreciate the help a lot and please, correct me if I’m wrong. I believe I’ve gone through every possibility to solve this issue.
I don’t know if it will help or not but I found that some port checkers gave false positives …. said the port was open when it wasn’t. A member here turned me on to Simple Port Tester. No more false positive. If nothing else, it’s one more verification on your port forwarding.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/simple_port_tester.html
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reading between the lines, perhaps incorrectly but, your server is separate from your flying machine but both use the same WAN ip?
so you in essence are trying to connect to a server via LAN while you friend is trying to connect via WAN ?? -
I don’t know if it will help or not but I found that some port checkers gave false positives …. said the port was open when it wasn’t. A member here turned me on to Simple Port Tester. No more false positive. If nothing else, it’s one more verification on your port forwarding.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/simple_port_tester.html
Thanks for helping Agave_Blue, I tried this as well and it shows all of the ports are open. Issue still persists, unfortunately.
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reading between the lines, perhaps incorrectly but, your server is separate from your flying machine but both use the same WAN ip?
so you in essence are trying to connect to a server via LAN while you friend is trying to connect via WAN ??This is correct Badger. I host on the same machine as I’m flying with. I connect to myself, and my friend connects on my external ip which shouldn’t be a problem as we did this in the past (BMS 4.32). I moved so my network changed, time went by and we updated our versions.
We now try to use Hamachi, which enables us to be on the same local network by ‘faking’ a local network environment that others can join from outside.Thanks for helping out, all suggestions are welcome.
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Did you try the DMZ configuration on your router?
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I don’t think the issue is with the server or brokpilot the issue is with the client. since he can’t port forward or do anything to his router it’s pointless.
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Are you on cable or proper DSL which still provides you with a valid ipv4 address?
Cable can be difficult if not impossible if your ISP NATs you to ipv6 to the outside world (google “DS-Lite” )
Also you might try booting off a Linux stick on a spare laptop and run portmap on your local ip address of your server. This should show you all open ports reachable from the “outside” in your LAN.
All the best, Uwe
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I don’t think the issue is with the server or brokpilot the issue is with the client. since he can’t port forward or do anything to his router it’s pointless.
I’m thinking the same.
We need another client to try to connect to brokpiloot’s server to see if he/she is successful. Then we will know where the problem really lies.