Minecraft Forums

So I've spent a few hours reading up on port forwarding and trying to troubleshoot this myself but I seem to be having no luck. It seemed really straightforward at first, but maybe some of you with more experience can help me.

Essentially, this is my first time attempting to host a server online--I've done LAN before but that's easier because the connection is local.

I having comcast xfinity with a good bandwidth. 50 MB Download/10 MB upload. I have a Cisco Linksys E1200 Router to go with the Motorola Cable Modem. I've even found videos of this exact same router interface but what the guy does doesn't work for me.

Essentially, I've configured it correctly for normal internet but the basic firewall which blocks my ports is up. So I added a port forwarding exception in the games/applications section for port 25565 and the IP 192.168.1.149.



I then went into my Network settings (running through ethernet) and selected DHCP Manual and entered 192.168.1.149 so it would request that IP each time I logged on through internet.

It now successfully always initializes with that IP but the port still seems to be blocked.



Here is my current server settings.



They aren't the issue as I can log in using the local IP from my own computer...it's only if I log in through my global IP like friends would that I get blocked. In fact I can't even see that the server exists when I add it. It just has the big red x. If I do a direct connect it queries for forever saying: "connecting to server". After about 30 seconds it says: "failed to connect to server. Operation timed out." which I understand means that it didn't get a response.

I read about static IP's and even though I didn't think I'd need more than a fixed local IP I noticed this section in the advanced settings where I could select a static global IP. After looking up my ISP DNS number as that was the only thing I didn't know from the given defaults I tried to connect using these settings. It wouldn't at first but did after I rebooted the router.



Now the server runs. The local IP and global IP both appear static and the server binds to the appropriate port and IP that I have listed to forward. Only this is it doesn't forward. I can't even see the server. If I deactivate the firewall it pops right up, 5-bars, but this is the only way. I understand this means that the port-forwarding isn't working at all though as you don't even need port forwarding if you're just gonna switch off the firewall. Has anyone seen any issue like this? I've basically followed the online advice step for step though none of them seemed to indicate I'd need a static global IP like above. Both setting access internet and seem fine and both act the same way when I search for my server from outside the firewall. So apparently it's just not working. Would changing my port number help or is this more fundamental?

any advice appreciated...I tried to include as much relevant detail as would be needed. I hear linksys is pretty common so I'm sure someone has gotten this same setup working.

oh, and the firewall settings that I disable to let it through are on my mac under the security settings. I wasn't sure if this was significant as I've read that the firewall that actually blocks incoming connections is in the router/modem not my computer. So unless they are linked I would say this indicates that it is getting referred to my computer and stops somewhere in the middle. I don't know enough to know if the ports are internal or external though so this might not make a difference.

I have my firewall set already to allow incoming connections to minecraft but this doesn't seem to make a difference. It only pops up when I turn it off. This is the minecraft application, however. I can't seem to add my server .jar to the list as it is greyed out when I try. Apparently it doesn't consider it an application.

Yeah, that's true.

Randomly enough I changed nothing and now it works. What happened was when I started up my server there would be a brief flickering message with the yellow alert symbol but it would cancel itself before I could read it. Randomly--not sure what I changed--this message stopped disappearing. I think I had firewall settings up or had left my multiplayer game searcher up for a while. The message said: "Do you want to allow JAVA to accept incoming communications?" Of course I did--that's what I'd been trying to do forever. Apparently Java wasn't on the firewall exception list. As soon as I said yes the server immediately appeared in the minecraft multiplayer connections. I logged in no problem and so did my brother several states away this morning.

Weirdly, Java removes itself from the exceptions list after I cancel the server but it seems to remember as it still connects fine no problem.