Port Forwarding Problems

[EngRos]

In the past I've used Hamachi to be able to run my own private Minecraft server for friends but decided to try my hand at port forwarding again (I had tried with previous versions with no luck, so went back to Hamachi) and this time I was determined to make it work. I followed a couple of up to date videos and instruction from portforward.com as well as the instructions given by my internet provider on my router's management pages. Everything was going well until I got a friend to test their connection for me.

The static IP address that I made, starting 192 was working just fine for me, however it wasn't working for my friend. Even if I added Minecraft's usual port 25565 to the end of the IP address, it still worked for me but not them.

 

My provider made the port forwarding seem very simple, even though I had to add Minecraft via advance options, simply using its name and port ranges, which I just left at 25565 for all the inputs. The video I watched that explained how to port forward and the importance of a static IP and the handy portforward.com said the external IP is what I send to friends, although in his video, his info was covered for obvious reasons and I only learned while doing this process that the IP address (192) was different to the external IP!

 

So I changed the server address in the multiplayer window to the 51 IP instead of the 192 IP and it just wouldn't connect even for me, said it had an abstract channel, whatever that means?

 

I even left my server address as the 192 IP and gave my friend the 51 IP, thinking that it could be as simple as that, but still nothing. White list is on false, so there should be no issue from there, I didn't run the server properties with any additional info apart from typing in the port, which is default anyway.. so I'm truly stumped.

 

Any suggestions please?

[brwainer]

Your friend has to connect to the public IP of your router, not the private IP of the server. Port forwarding means forward requests from an external port to an internal one. If you don't know your publicIP, either look at the WAN status in your router, or go to ipchicken.com while connected to the router.

[EngRos]

9 hours ago, brwainer said:

Your friend has to connect to the public IP of your router, not the private IP of the server. Port forwarding means forward requests from an external port to an internal one. If you don't know your publicIP, either look at the WAN status in your router, or go to ipchicken.com while connected to the router.

My public IP is the one that starts with 51 but like I said, that doesn't work for the server and he still can't connect with it but thanks for the suggestion.

[beanhubbleday]

• In server.properties under 'SERVER-IP=' leave it blank
• Make sure the IP address of your PC is static and make sure in the router settings you set the start and end port to 25565 and select TCP&UDP.
• Give your friend the full 51.XXX.XXX.XXX address and ask him/her to connect.

[Falconevo]

Also make sure you have a Windows Firewall rule to allow the traffic past the software firewall.

If you are using any 3rd party anti-virus software which has a firewall built in, the same goes.  The Router may pass the traffic via Port Forward/NAT but you may still be blocking that traffic on your local PC's software firewall.

[AndrewReaganM]

Keep in mind that port forwarding works by forwarding whatever port you select from your external IP, to the internal IP that you specify. 

 

It looks like this:

 

Internet Client (Friend's PC) -> Your External IP at Port 25565 (Your Router) -> Internal IP at Port 25565 (Your Computer)

 

The red arrow is where the port forwarding happens, as all ports inbound are blocked by default. You are essentially opening a window for your friend's computer to access yours, but only at that port.

 

Long story short, just make sure you are forwarding port 25565 from your external IP to port 25565 at your computer's internal IP. Also if Windows firewall is enabled, it will block this by default. Disable Windows firewall for the sake of testing, and if it works then go ahead and re-enable it, but set a rule to allow port 25565.

 

Good luck!