How to check the firewall / Internet Connectivity

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Revision as of 16:35, 17 April 2009 by Bernd Nowak (Talk | contribs)

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First of all, as much of a surprise as this may be, neither WinVROC nor iGOR needs GPL to even be installed on the system to chat or to get a racelist, so just forget about GPL mods, settings and what not. Changing anything in GPL will not help you get a racelist or chat.

Unless you have specifically enabled a SOCKS proxy or your ISP/network admin has told you have to use one, YOU SHOULD NOT USE SOCKS AT ALL. Turn it OFF, OFF, OFF (make sure it's OFF now even if you haven't enabled it). SOCKS doesn't really have anything to do with having a firewall either, it's just a mechanism to go through a firewall that otherwise completely blocks all traffic. It needs special settings on the router. I don't know of any home routers/gateways that have a built-in SOCKS proxy, so it's unlikely that you would need to use it. Most users may have socks but this is not meant. Instead study the Wikipedia article on SOCKS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS

Furthermore, opening all those ports in your firewall will probably not help either as they are meant for hosting, i.e. INCOMING traffic. You seem to have a problem with OUTGOING traffic. Now most home routers don't block outgoing traffic, although some have the ability. However, many personal software firewalls DO block outgoing traffic. I think the most likely culprit is one of those, even if you said you disabled them all. Are you running Windows XP SP2? Did you disable its firewall as well?

Telnet Client in Vista

By default, Vista doesn’t install the Telnet client. The client is for text-based communication with remote systems. You can install it by following these steps:

  1. Click Start then select Control Panel.
  2. Select Programs and Features.
  3. Select Turn Windows features on or off.
  4. Select the Telnet Client option.
  5. Click OK.
  6. A dialog box will appear to confirm installation. The telnet command should now be available.

WinVROC

To verify your connection to the racelist server(s), try the following commands from the Command Prompt (aka DOS Prompt), for WinVROC: 

telnet racelist.vroc.net 44044

This should result in the Command Prompt window being cleared pretty much immediately. Pressing Enter should bring back the C:\> prompt. If this command does not clear the screen, but rather times-out, something is definitely blocking traffic to the VROC racelist server. If it works, but WinVROC itself still doesn't, even though you have (again) made sure vroc.ini looks like this: 

[VROC]
Address=racelist.vroc.net

then something is blocking traffic to and from WinVROC.exe (a software firewall, like the WinXP firewall, ZoneAlarm, Norton, or whatever). If the "telnet" method doesn't work, it could also be your router.

iGOR

For iGOR try this: 

ping gplrank.info

Verify that this works first. "works" means that this command should display ping times, not only time-outs. If the ping works, try 

telnet gplrank.info 30197

This should pretty much immediately clear the screen. Pressing Enter 3 times should bring back the prompt (after some messages from the Nidhoeggr racelist server). If this works but iGOR still doesn't, even though you have verified your iGOR.ini is correct, it's likely to be a software firewall problem. If either the ping or the telnet doesn't work, it could also be your router.

If none of this helps, I would turn to your router next. Verify it allows all outgoing traffic. Also verify it allows incoming traffic for established connections. If you can't find anything in your router to explain this, turn to your ISP/network admin and see if they closed down any ports on their end. Taken from here: http://forum.rscnet.org/showpost.php?p=2855008&postcount=15

Further testing

If you have problems with the above commands and receive something like could not find host you may have a problem with the internet name resolution called DNS. To verify this please try the following commands from the Command Prompt (aka DOS Prompt): 

nslookup gplrank.info

Example output: 

Server: 192.168.100.100
Address: 192.168.100.100#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: gplrank.info
Address: 70.88.168.141

You must look for the last line Address: 70.88.168.141 (the address itself can be different !)

More help can be found at the SRMZ.net

--Bernd Nowak 13:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

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