NAT traversal problem with Messenger RA.

[Richard Jones]

I'm stumped with a Remote Assistance via Messenger problem. I
have a simple network behind a UPnP enabled Linksys router with two machines
on it. I can do over an RA over the internet to one machine but not the
other. Looking at remote assistance event logs, on one machine, Messenger
gets the public WAN side IP address and sends that, but on the other machine
it fails to get the true public IP and just sends the 192.168.xxx.xxx
private IP.

I got to Googling and discovered that Messenger 4.7 uses
DirectPlay for NAT traversal, and not the SSDP discovery service which the
"Internet Gateway" icon in Network Connections uses for UPnP enabled
routers. The Gateway interface works fine and allows you to manually foward
ports via UPnP and all that. But Direct Play is apparently failing to do the
same thing on one machine.

Any ideas on what could be wrong. I'm at my wit's end here.



-Richard

 

[Jason Tsang]

Have you tried upgrading to Windows Messenger 5.1?

Windows Messenger 5.1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...73-5f8c-4b9a-940f-9157a3b3d774&DisplayLang=en

 

[Richard Jones]

Jason,

Thanks, I'll try the latest version. I was using 4.7 and didn't
even know a later version was able. MS seems to have the 5.1 version hidden
pretty good. <g> I seached for "Windows Messenger" on MS's site and found a
page that said the latest version was included in SP2 with no information
the link you have.


-Richard

 

[Richard Jones]

Have you tried upgrading to Windows Messenger 5.1?

Windows Messenger 5.1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...73-5f8c-4b9a-940f-9157a3b3d774&DisplayLang=en

Jason,

Unfortunately, v5.1 didn't solve the problem. A buddy and I were
playing around with this some more, and this is the situation:

We both have two machine LANs behind routers, his a Linksys and
mine a D-Link. All machines are running XP Pro SP2 with all updates fail to
send the correct WAN IP address in the RA ticket. One of his machines fails
as well, but his laptop, connected via wireless works.

Now, one of my machines is an AMD x64 and I have an install of XP
64-bit on it. I booted it up and it worked fine, sending the correct WAN IP
address still using v 4.7 of Messenger So XP 64-bit works on that machine,
but the 32 bit XP does not.

Then on a lark, I have an evaluation copy CD of Win2K3 server and I
installed that on my other machine (32 bit only) and it was able to do NAT
traversal with RA fine as well.

I suspect this is some configuration problem, some conflict or
mis-setting that is common to both my 32-bit XP installs but not the other
OSes, and is also common to one of my buddy's machine but not the other.


-Richard

 

[Gary Tsang]

Do both of you have UPnP enabled in your router?
Do you have the Upnp framework exception enabled in your Windows Firewall
exception.

Are either of you using any third-party firewall?

 

[Richard Jones]

Do both of you have UPnP enabled in your router?
Do you have the Upnp framework exception enabled in your Windows Firewall
exception.

Are either of you using any third-party firewall?

Gary,

Yes, UPnP is enabled on both our routers and appears to be
working -- the problem appears to be something in the particular OS
installs. On my end, I have two machines, one x64 the other. The XP Pro SP2
32-bit on both my machines fails to get the proper WAN IP address. Now, boot
XP 64-bit on the x64 machine, and it works. Now, boot Win2K3 Server on the
other machine, and it works fine.

On my buddy's end, he has a desktop and a laptop, both running XP
Pro SP2 32-bit. His laptop works and sends the correct WAN IP, but his
desktop fails, just like my two 32-bit XP installs.

Norton (Internet Security and A/V) are common to both of my 32-bit
installs. I have completely disabled Norton and tried it but it still fails.
My buddy has no 3rd party firewall, and we completely disabled the Windows
firewall on his desktop and it still fails there as well.

In Googling, I found out that Messenger uses Direct Play's
built-in UPnP engine, not the SSDP UPnP control point engine. On both my XP
32-bit installs and his desktop, the SSDP engine appears to be working fine.
We can both foward ports using the "Internet Gateway" properties from
Network connections. I wrote a simple Vbscript to get the WAN IP address
using the SSDP engine, and that works on both machines.

So my guess is it something screwed up with DirectPlay, but I
don't have a clue how to troubleshoot it. I tried reinstalling DirectX, but
that didn't help.


-Richard