Problems with some users. Firewall blocking port?

[asunyer]

My ElectroServer is running on a web server and everything seems to be ok. A have a simple multiplayer game made with flex. I can play from some computers in different places but some others can't play.

Is it necessary to open the 9898 port in the users PC? I've already opened in the server.

Is there any log file to see if there is any error on server side?

I'm trying to find the error but this is my first project with ES and I have too many questions about it...

I hope you can help me...

Thanks!

[tcarr]

The first thing to check is whether the users who can't connect have a recent version of the Flash player.

Yes it is possible for the users to have port 9898 blocked by a firewall. This happens frequently with users who are on college campuses for example. What is often done is to have three gateway listeners, on ports 9898 (or whatever is convenient), 443, and 80. Implement the client so that if connection fails using port 9898, it tries 443, and if that fails it tries port 80.

Odds are Mike Parks has more ideas.

[asunyer]

Thanks Teresa!

If a user is able to join a room, that means that his port is not blocked, isn't it?

In some cases, users can join a room but then they can't start playing, this sounds like I've made a mistake in my code... I will have to check it...

But why not using port 80 instead of 9898 to avoid problems? is there any problem? I'm using a web server (IIS) using port 80, they will conflict?

Thanks

[tcarr]

If the same server is running a web server, then ES4 can't use port 80 for a gateway listener.

If the user is able to join a room, then yes his port is not blocked - unless he made the connection using one port and that room needs a second protocol, such as binary or streaming. Sometimes users get disconnected for various reasons. Sometimes there are bugs either in the plugin code or in the client code that are throwing exceptions causing users to not be able to play.

[asunyer]

Thanks Teresa,

I suppose there is an error in my code, I'm going to check/rewrite it...

[tcarr]

Trace is our friend. On the plugin side, I use debug level logging a lot. See the wiki's article on Logging for more details on how to do that.