Networking Issue

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Farland
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Networking Issue

Post by Farland »

So this isn't a problem with Maptool directly, but I figured I would ask for help here. I have 4 players who sit at a table with me in the USA and one who is in Scotland. I wired my house for ethernet. I have a fios quantum gigabit modem and a netgear gigabit switch. When I use the ethernet, my in house players can connect but my Scotland friend can't. When I am on wireless, he connects with no problems. I have turned off the firewall, added java and maptool as an exception, open and forward the port on maptool, but I can't figure it out. Any ideas?
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aliasmask
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by aliasmask »

Farland wrote:When I use the ethernet, my in house players can connect but my Scotland friend can't. When I am on wireless, he connects with no problems.
Connecting via wireless will give you one ip address and via Lan a different ip address which messes up your port forwarding.

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Full Bleed
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by Full Bleed »

Farland wrote:So this isn't a problem with Maptool directly, but I figured I would ask for help here. I have 4 players who sit at a table with me in the USA and one who is in Scotland. I wired my house for ethernet. I have a fios quantum gigabit modem and a netgear gigabit switch. When I use the ethernet, my in house players can connect but my Scotland friend can't. When I am on wireless, he connects with no problems. I have turned off the firewall, added java and maptool as an exception, open and forward the port on maptool, but I can't figure it out. Any ideas?
I'm using the same router/service (not running my server through a switch though.)

I would 1) Turn your firewall back on. 2) Remove the port forwarding. 3) Use MT's UPnP when starting the server.
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aliasmask
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by aliasmask »

Fyi, MT UPnP never consistently worked for me since after b91 which is why I use port forwarding. I think it has something to do with router upnp discovery because if I turn upnp off and then on, it will work properly. I think port triggering had a similar problem with connections. I have the standard comcast router.

What I would do is set up port forwarding for both network cards (lan and wifi) with different port numbers and change the port based on which you are using. For example, 51234 could be for lan and 51235 could be for wifi. Use your router to reserve the same ip addresses when you connect.

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Re: Networking Issue

Post by Full Bleed »

aliasmask wrote:Fyi, MT UPnP never consistently worked for me since after b91 which is why I use port forwarding. I think it has something to do with router upnp discovery because if I turn upnp off and then on, it will work properly.
I've experienced this, too.

But *if* the issue is not properly port-forwarding with the LAN, and since I have this same hardware/service and can get it to work (unless the switch is doing something), I figured the path to least resistance in solving the problem was to fiddle with UPnP until it works. He'll be able to go into the router and see to open port-forwarding rule that MT creates.
What I would do is set up port forwarding for both network cards (lan and wifi) with different port numbers and change the port based on which you are using. For example, 51234 could be for lan and 51235 could be for wifi. Use your router to reserve the same ip addresses when you connect.
Having a static IP on his computer should suffice, provided he has the forwarding set up correctly and he's using the same computer on the LAN and WiFi.
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by taustinoc »

Full Bleed wrote:
What I would do is set up port forwarding for both network cards (lan and wifi) with different port numbers and change the port based on which you are using. For example, 51234 could be for lan and 51235 could be for wifi. Use your router to reserve the same ip addresses when you connect.
Having a static IP on his computer should suffice, provided he has the forwarding set up correctly and he's using the same computer on the LAN and WiFi.
I wouldn't bet on it. The LAN adapter pretty much has to have a different IP address than the WiFi adapter. It may even be on a different network, depending on the router. So setting up a single port forwarding will route to one, but not the other. There has to be two port forwarding settings, one to each, to be sure it will work if only one is connected.

(I have a vague memory of a discussion some time back of MapTool, or maybe Java, being inconsistent in which IP it chooses, but I don't recall any details.)

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aliasmask
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by aliasmask »

Yeah, reservations are MAC based and 2 nics means 2 MACs.

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Re: Networking Issue

Post by taustinoc »

I'm thinking the more reliable way to do this would be to start the server with an RPTools.net Alias, with port forwarding set up for both network interfaces (using different ports) and have people connect through that. That way, even if MapTools (or Java) switches between the interfaces every time you start it, the remote players will get the right settings.

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Re: Networking Issue

Post by Full Bleed »

taustinoc wrote:
Full Bleed wrote:
What I would do is set up port forwarding for both network cards (lan and wifi) with different port numbers and change the port based on which you are using. For example, 51234 could be for lan and 51235 could be for wifi. Use your router to reserve the same ip addresses when you connect.
Having a static IP on his computer should suffice, provided he has the forwarding set up correctly and he's using the same computer on the LAN and WiFi.
I wouldn't bet on it. The LAN adapter pretty much has to have a different IP address than the WiFi adapter. It may even be on a different network, depending on the router. So setting up a single port forwarding will route to one, but not the other. There has to be two port forwarding settings, one to each, to be sure it will work if only one is connected.
Hmmm... I seem to remember doing this and it worked so long as I didn't have the WiFi adapter and LAN adapter hooked up at the same time... but I will concede that it could cause a number of issues depending on his setup. Heck, now that I think of it, I may not have even been using a static IP... back then I would often just fire up MT and if people had an issue connecting I knew I had to go in and update the forwarding I'd set for the previous session... :/

That said, that's a distraction from my initial advice... what I believe to be the proverbial path of least resistance for his case... to use UPnP and not bother with the port-forwarding with that router. I'm using it with MT and that router/ISP... and though it can be finicky to get started, it does work (and will throw an error on startup when it's not going to.)
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Farland
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by Farland »

Thanks for all the replies. UPnP is a no go. I get a bunch of "Looking for Microsoft Teredo Tunneling Adapter" etc messages and then I get "UPNP: Found 1 IGDs but no port mapping succeeded!?" message. UPnP is enabled on my router (apparently from the admin side of things it looks like it is at least.)
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Farland
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by Farland »

@aliasmask:
What I would do is set up port forwarding for both network cards (lan and wifi) with different port numbers and change the port based on which you are using. For example, 51234 could be for lan and 51235 could be for wifi. Use your router to reserve the same ip addresses when you connect.
Could you give me more info on how to do this? I have Verizon Fios and the Quantum router. The issue def seems to be my router. MY player can connect over wifi on port 51234.
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taustinoc
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Re: Networking Issue

Post by taustinoc »

First, determine what the IP addresses are on the two network adapters:

Press the Windows key and the letter "R" at the same time. This should open the Run prompt.

Type in "cmd" (without the quotes) and <Enter>. This should open a black Command Prompt box.

In the Command Prompt box, type in "ipconfig" (without the quotes) and <Enter>. This will display information about your network setup. You may have to scroll up to see everything, depending on how complicated the setup is.

Look for the sections labeled "Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:" and "Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Connection" (probably with a number after it).

The first one will show the (local) IP address of the wired connection. The second one will show the (local) IP address of the WiFi adapter. They pretty much have to be different.

Then log into the router and set up a second port forwarding route, like the first one (to the wired adapter), except it must have a different port number, and it should point to the second IP address. Note that this is the port number being forwarded. The port it forwards to has to be the same on both, because MapTool will only run on one port. So using aliasmask's numbers, you would forward both 51234 and 51235 to 51234.

If that doesn't do it, you've probably got a weird conflict where MapTool (or Java, I forget which) is using one adapter, but everything else is using the other. I suspect the only way to resolve that would be to disable the hardware for the wired adapter in the Device Manager when you want to use WiFi (which is a royal pain, because then you have to remember to re-enable it when you want to use the wired adapter again).

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