Wormnet: Hosting does not work anymore [Archive]

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sunny2305

4 Jan 2013, 19:46

Hi there!

Since a while I am not able to host games anymore. It used to work before and I did not change anything at my router, my firewall, or my operating system (Windows 7 Professional 64bit). I did not change anything in the settings of Worms World Party neither. The only thing which might have changed is that might have installed some new software, but nothing regarding WWP. Before hosting games was working at different places with different routers (portforwarding enabled of course). Now it doesn't work in any of them anymore.

I always had (and still have) all patches installed (including the recommended registry changes). But when I host a game, noone can join anymore (timeout). The IP which shows up in the popup others see when trying to join my game is my correct external IP.

I read the thread of Muzer: http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39017

So here are the answers to the questions:

What you get in your web browser when you browse to wormnet2.team17.com (it should be a single line of text with the word WormNET2)

Yes, I get "WormNET2".

Type the following command:

code :: telnet wormnet2.team17.com 6677

And tell us the output.

NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname, cached
PING :wormnet2.team17.com
ERROR :Closing Link: [unknown@255.255.255.255] (Ping timeout: 61 seconds)

Finally, post the contents of your serverlist.htm file

<html><body>
 
 
 W E L C O M E TO W O R M N E T 2 
 The home of World Worm Warfare! 
 (C)Copyright 2001 Team17 Software Limited. All Rights Reserved. 
 
 
 
 Select your connection point: 
<a href="http://wormnet2.team17.com/wwpweb/welcomeloginform.asp">
 United Kingdom (Wormnet2) 
</a>
 Located at Team17's HQ in Yorkshire, UK. 
 
 
 Visit the Worms World Website: WORMS.TEAM17.COM 
 Visit the Worms World Party website: WWP.TEAM17.COM 
</body>
</html>

I have no idea what's going wrong. As I already wrote, I am not aware of any changes affecting WWP. How can I find out which problem occurs?

I hope somebody can help!

Greetings,
sunny

StepS

4 Jan 2013, 21:20

it could be possible that your ISP enabled magistral NAT which prevents users from hosting stuff on their PCs (this is due to lack of IPv4 addresses), however such an ISP would be very dumb and stupid since IPs can't go gray that easily. does your IP change everytime you connect to internet? is this problem present with other software that uses opening ports?
to see what really happens, host a game in WWP, minimize the game, and then go to canyouseeme.com where you have to input port 17011.
are you using a router? also what software did you install, check that it's not blocking anything (try disabling firewall)

sunny2305

5 Jan 2013, 14:40

Hi StepS,

thanks for your answer!

it could be possible that your ISP enabled magistral NAT which prevents users from hosting stuff on their PCs (this is due to lack of IPv4 addresses), however such an ISP would be very dumb and stupid since IPs can't go gray that easily.

I think this is not the case, because it doesn't work with any ISP anymore. I used to play worms at different places with different internet providers (even in different countries ;)) and at none of them it works now.

does your IP change everytime you connect to internet?

No, it changes only when I restart my router. Then I always changed the IP in the game settings when connecting to Wormnet. During the last years it always worked like this.

is this problem present with other software that uses opening ports?

No. But I do not use many other programs which need portforwarding (just one, this one still works).

to see what really happens, host a game in WWP, minimize the game, and then go to canyouseeme.com where you have to input port 17011.

I guess you meant canyouseeme.org

Stupid question, but how do I minimize the game? I always play in Fullscreen mode, the game starts fullscreen already.

I read http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=35316 and http://forum.team17.co.uk/showpost.php?p=628480&postcount=7 but didn't find a solution. I can't get out of the worms game, even when using a second monitor. Starting the task manager works, but I cannot get outside the taskmanager to do something.

are you using a router?

Yes, WiFi routers, but as I already wrote, nothing changed there, at none of the places (all with routers) where I used to host worms games. I am pretty sure it cannot be a router problem, since nobody changed the settings of the routers, but worms stopped to work at the same time everywhere I tried to use it!

Something could have changed in my system, but I do not remember anything which could cause the problems with worms neither.

also what software did you install, check that it's not blocking anything (try disabling firewall)

I don't really remember which new software I installed since the last time worms worked correctly. But no games or other software which would use port forwarding, just tools for my work.

Nothing has changed with my firewall neither, but however of course I disabled it completely when I saw that the game hosting doesn't work anymore. Actually, this was my first attempt.

Still clueless ... I'll continue looking for a solution to minimize the game. But installing a VM to be able to start worms in a window is not an option. I hope there'll be another solution to find out why game hosting doesn't work anymore.

sunny

StepS

5 Jan 2013, 15:59

I think this is not the case, because it doesn't work with any ISP anymore. I used to play worms at different places with different internet providers (even in different countries ;)) and at none of them it works now.
how come? IPv4 addresses are almost exhausted (already exhausted in many parts of the world). There are a LOT of NAT ISPs around there, in Russia, Poland, and in China (would be weird if not :confused: ), and even in brazil, also adjust all the mobile GPRS/3G networks to this list, because we have more than billions of mobile phones in the world

Stupid question, but how do I minimize the game? I always play in Fullscreen mode, the game starts fullscreen already.

its easy man :) works on all systems
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=57848

as the last solution you could try to connect to internet directly using your cable, and trying to host that way. So you can actually know if it's router or not!

sunny2305

5 Jan 2013, 17:30

Stupid question, but how do I minimize the game? I always play in Fullscreen mode, the game starts fullscreen already.
its easy man works on all systems
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=57848

Great! It worked!

But seems as if there's really a problem with my routers/ISPs, because the website says:

Error: I could not see your service on 87.218.10.220 on port (17011)
Reason: No route to host

:(

I don't really understand it as I am sure nothing has changed at any of my routers.

I'll try to connect with cable later, to see what happens then.

StepS

5 Jan 2013, 18:32

:(

I don't really understand it as I am sure nothing has changed at any of my routers.

I'll try to connect with cable later, to see what happens then.

hi! this error seems to be very good as it indicates that there's really something with your router!
in most of cases it would mean that your port is forwarded to incorrect local IP. if you didn't set up a static local IP, then other users might offset it and you will be given another local IP, so the port forwarding will go wrong.
the router distributes local IP depending on how many users are connected to it, which is why everything got wrong without changing any settings.
go to your router's settings, and check that the forwarded port for the local IP matches your actual local IP

sunny2305

5 Jan 2013, 20:15

Hi again!

go to your router's settings, and check that the forwarded port for the local IP matches your actual local IP

I already checked this. And I checked it now again:

The router's configuration:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20841574/WWP/router.png

My ipconfig:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20841574/WWP/ipconfig.png

For me, everything seems okay.

But curiously, now I tried to connect and host over LAN, and canyouseeme tells the following:

Success: I can see your service on 87.218.54.92 on port (17011)
Your ISP is not blocking port 17011

So it must really be a problem with the router and WiFi. I just still have no idea which one!

Any suggestion?

StepS

6 Jan 2013, 00:14

Success: I can see your service on 87.218.54.92 on port (17011)
Your ISP is not blocking port 17011
your game hosted successfully

sunny2305

6 Jan 2013, 09:09

Yes, but this was on cable. I need to be able to host on wireless! And I can't see what's causing the problem, although it are obviously my WiFi routers ...

Muzer

6 Jan 2013, 11:13

You don't perhaps have separate IPs for wired and wifi?

sunny2305

6 Jan 2013, 11:48

I do! But the portforwarding is set for the IP I have over WiFi as you can see in my screenshots. It's really weird.

sunny2305

6 Jan 2013, 17:24

For some "magical" reason it's working now! I have no idea why, but now it works again over WiFi as well.

Sometimes I hate all these computer stuff ...

Hope it keeps working! And thank you all for trying to help.

sunny

StepS

7 Jan 2013, 01:05

routers (when they're getting old mostly) are known to have 'magic' issues (i had some like a sudden disconnection and no reconnection until reboot, or failed portforwarding for no reason until reboot), sometimes reboot helps, sometimes not.
glad it works now :)

sunny2305

7 Jan 2013, 09:53

Well, I rebooted the router a million times (at least it felt like this ;)) since WWP didn't work anymore! But yes, it really seems to work again, I played several matches yesterday! :)

Thank you!

Muzer

7 Jan 2013, 13:30

Well, I rebooted the router a million times (at least it felt like this ;)) since WWP didn't work anymore! But yes, it really seems to work again, I played several matches yesterday! :)

Thank you!
Do note that if you ARE trying to forward the same port to more than one place (eg your cable and wireless IP addresses) the results will be an error message at best and unpredictable behaviour at worst.

sunny2305

7 Jan 2013, 14:34

No, I never use the cable. It was just for testing purposes. I forward the ports only to my wireless IP (see screenshots). This is why I can't understand at all that when I tried with cable it worked, but with wireless it didn't. It should have been the other way round ...

However, now I don't think it was a problem with WWP itself, seems more probable that my router shows some odd behaviour. The strange thing is that the same problems happened at two other places where I used to play worms. But I didn't have the possibility to try it there again, so far.

StepS

7 Jan 2013, 14:51

This is why I can't understand at all that when I tried with cable it worked, but with wireless it didn't. It should have been the other way round ...

the cable which goes from your internet or the cable which goes from your routers LAN port? because if you connect directly with your Internet cable, you don't forward anything, you are the master computer, and here you have router and the thing is, router doesn't know whom to send the incoming data because you aren't alone in a wifi network!

sunny2305

7 Jan 2013, 14:55

the cable which goes from your internet or the cable which goes from your routers LAN port?

I connected via cable with the router. I don't have another possibility because my internet works via telephone line and I don't have direct access.

and here you have router and the thing is, router doesn't know whom to send the incoming data because you aren't alone in a wifi network!

Well, when I tell the router respective IP, as I always did, my router *should* know!

StepS

7 Jan 2013, 14:57

depends on how old your router is. they always produce unexplainable things near the end of their life. i have disconnection issues sometimes nowadays, and in the past i had a weird problem with unexpected cancellation of port forwarding (forwarded ports refused to work for no reason until the router's reboot)
Kawoosh says that it's probably because of weak condensers in routers

sunny2305

7 Jan 2013, 15:03

Well, it is not that old, I bought it in October 2011 when I moved here, because my old one really had problems already (I had to restart it every couple of days).

The old one was from 2004 or something ... so it was okay to get a new one. But this new one should still work reliably, in my opinion.

StepS

7 Jan 2013, 15:04

well yes it depends on the model and manufacturer, and their job isn't easy so you never know when they may break
just be more gentle with them ;)

sunny2305

7 Jan 2013, 15:11

I'll try to caress him (her?) more frequently! :D