How to Open A Port

[Alastair MacFarlane]

Dear Group,

I have created a Visual basic program that communicates through Port 87 and
works fine at work but at home I get an error: "Socket not Bound..." If I
type the following:

telnet 170.50.1.1 87

Could not open a connection with the host on port 87: connection failed.

How can I open up port 87 to my test program? I have tried going into the
network connections and opening up my firewall settings and adding a
Firewall Exception and adding a Port e.g TCP 87. I have even gone to the
advanced settings in the Services to add the port as well but I am confused.
I still get the error.

The only difference is that in work I am running Windows XP Professional and
at home it is the Home edition. It does not work on my home laptop with no
internet connection and Professional XP.

Thanks again for the group's help.

Alastair MacFarlane

 

[Guest]

If you have a router try opening the port on that. The other question is if
you are accessing the application remotely (from home where the app is at
work), since if that's the case you'll need to talk to your company to verify
that their routers are configured to let you connect through that port.

Another option is if you are trying to connect to a machine you just loaded
the program on, it may not have terminal services enabled (allowing you to
connect via telnet). You'll need to start those (XP Pro or Server only, not
home).

If all of that checks out, uninstall all anti-virus software and see if it
works, quite a few AV programs now are comming with firewall software built
in that they may or may not notify you of.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Dear Group,

I have created a Visual basic program that communicates through Port 87
and works fine at work but at home I get an error: "Socket not Bound..."
If I type the following:

telnet 170.50.1.1 87

Could not open a connection with the host on port 87: connection failed.

How can I open up port 87 to my test program? I have tried going into the
network connections and opening up my firewall settings and adding a
Firewall Exception and adding a Port e.g TCP 87. I have even gone to the
advanced settings in the Services to add the port as well but I am
confused. I still get the error.

The only difference is that in work I am running Windows XP Professional
and at home it is the Home edition. It does not work on my home laptop
with no internet connection and Professional XP.

Thanks again for the group's help.

Alastair MacFarlane

You must create a tunnel at your router that directs port 87 packets
to the internal IP address of your office PC. This implies that this
PC has a fixed IP address and that the default gateway set at the
office PC points at the office router.

Note that many service providers block ports numbers below 1000.
If so then you may have to select a higher port number.