Noone can connect when I try to host

[Jeff]

I'm running Win7 x64, I have the windows firewall disabled, and Eset firewall temporarily disabled, and an Actiontec MI 424 WR Rev. E router. I tried forwarding both any->32320 and just 32320->32320, but in any case, http://www.canyouseeme.org reports either connection refused or connection timed out. Any ideas?

[x4000]

Hmm... do you have any other antivirus installed that might have a firewall?  That's the thing that first jumps to mind.

The next thing that jumps to mind is, are you sure that you're forwarding to the right internal IP?  If you have multiple adapters (Wifi and wired, for instance -- or virtual adapters from various programs) that can cause some confusion.  Or sometimes I accidentally write down the gateway address instead of my IP address, when looking at the list of like 5 adapters in ipconfig /all.

It's possible that your ISP is blocking traffic on ports it doesn't know what to do with, too, actually.  You might try doing the http://www.canyouseeme.org/ thing on port 80 or similar, if you set that up to be forwarded in to your computer.  Worst case, if that's what's going on, you and the people you play with can change the AI War port over to 80 to get around that.

Regardless, this is the full list of things that I can think of that would cause this:
1. Wrong internal IP specified in port forwarding.
2. Wrong external IP specified to connect to.
3. A software firewall still blocking the port or the program.
4. The hardware firewall on the router doing some unexpected blocking.
5. The ISP doing some unexpected blocking.

...and I'm out.  I think that's pretty much the gamut there, until you start getting any connection through at all.  Then AI War itself enters into the equation (though it's very reliable and well tested), but I don't think we're even to that point yet here.

Hope that helps!

[Jeff]

No other security software of any sort. I have previously hosted a webserver and various listen servers for source games (like Left 4 Dead) on this same PC with no issues. I've tried changing the ports to various other numbers high and low, but I always get connection refused, and the router already routes 80 to another PC that is now hosting the webserver.

[Jeff]

I know this doesn't make sense since I've done all the right steps, I've actually just ignored the problem for a while now and asked other people to host but now I have to and it hasn't gone away. I assume I can't use the steam cache verifier since the game updates outside of steam?

[x4000]

Hmmm... I'm pretty well out of ideas, then.  That's pretty much the range of what could go wrong, and it sounds like you're definitely more experienced than most.  There's always options like Comodo or Hamachi, but as for a direct connection in your case I'm at a loss as to what's causing the blockage.

If 443 isn't going to the other webserver, you might try that one just in case.

Oh, I guess one other thing that might be the issue: I've found in the past, with programs like Zone Alarm in particular, that disabling them does not fully disable their protection.  They have some custom drivers that they load in, apparently, which keep blocking even when they're not supposed to... sometimes.  That's been my experience in a few cases, but it's been a number of years and was with some other games. You might try actually re-enabling those software firewalls, and adding in exceptions for the port and AI War as a server and client, and maybe that would do it.  If there's no other security software around, that's the only possibility that comes to mind. :/

In terms of the steam cache verifier, you can indeed use that but it will I think revert you to the prior version and you'll have to update again.  But the odds of this silently failing are extremely low.  If you look in the runtimedata folder of AI War's game folder, you should see any error messages that might have happened.  If there's something there, then the problem is with AI War, but it didn't sound like you were getting to that point.  And it's pretty verbose in its error logging, so if there's nothing there then the traffic almost definitely isn't reaching AI War at all.

Hope that helps!

[Jeff]

Yeah I just thought of trying 443 but no dice. Set Eset firewall to a non-specific rule that allows all connections in/out by aiwar.exe, now I get timeouts instead of connection refusals. Edit: Even tried running AIWar.exe as admin.

[Jeff]

Hmm I wonder of that canyouseeme site might have trouble w/ the lobby, as I just tried to get it to connect to a Supreme Commander lobby (and I know people can connect to that just fine) but the site still reported connection refusal, maybe because it doesn't try to talk to the lobby. I'll have to wait and see if I can find someone to try to connect to my AI war lobby in the meantime to be sure.

[Jeff]

Okay, I had my brother connect and he could join my lobby, even though I thought I undid all the changes I made today, and it didn't work before. I have no idea. Problem solved I guess?