[solved]Trouble Connecting to Prosody Server from Outside Home Network

Convergence · 2016-02-16 23:52:55

Steps I've taken so far:
-Installed and run prosody

-opened ports on my router, pointed them to my prosody server (I found the ports on wikipedia). Yes I'm using a static IP address setup.

- Used afraid's Dynamic IP address to have a DNS lookup myserver.com point at my address (note that's not my actual address)

-From within my home network, pointed my clients at the myserver.com address, everything worked. (it is important to note that I did not use any IP address, and certainly not the internal IP address of my server on my LAN. )

-Took this as confirmation that everything was working, that my clients were actually connecting to the server from outside my network.

-Left my home network with my client (running on my phone), and noticed that I had a "server not found error".

What am I doing wrong? There's no way that my clients (in this case 'conversations') is just bypassing the URL that I used, and just scanning the local network for a server, are they?

Could my cell provider be blocking those ports? (This question can probably be disregarded due to the fact that I just tried to connect behind a commercial VPN, and it didn't work.) Could it be something that my home ISP is doing?

Last edited by Convergence (2016-02-21 22:05:53)

x33a · 2016-02-17 05:29:49

Convergence wrote:

Steps I've taken so far:
opened ports on my router, pointed them to my prosody server (I found the ports on wikipedia). Yes I'm using a static IP address setup.

Wait, you need to use wikipedia to find ports related to a service you set up?

First of all try to see if the port is open on the public IP. Use nmap or netcat to check that.

Convergence · 2016-02-19 01:29:14

I nmap'd my.server.example, and 5222 and 5269 are open. I expected 5223 to be open (I enabled SSL in the config) but it wasn't.

Edit: As it turns out, 5223 should not be open. It's a legacy port.

Edit 2: So, I tried it (nmap) from my phone with wifi turned off. It doesn't work. My router is running openwrt, and I'm looking right at the firewall that says that the ports are being forwarded to the server. Further, I asked some random guy on the internet to nmap me, and he said both IP addresses are filtered. Weird. I thought I had port forwarding mastered many years ago.

Last edited by Convergence (2016-02-19 02:01:18)

Convergence · 2016-02-19 05:09:32

Ok, I think I figured it out. My server is also an openVPN client. I didn't think that it mattered, because all my services (ssh, xmpp, samba, nfs, etc) all work fine within my lan. Apparently (If I'm right) OpenVPN identifies connections coming from the WAN, and filters them. I just assumed that the VPN worked mostly on outgoing ports. Ugh. I wonder if I can "container" the services I need vpn'd.

I'll test it out by disabling my vpn (sometime this weekend), and see if that solves the problem. If so, I'll mark this thread "solved".

Edit: It looks like it was the VPN.

Last edited by Convergence (2016-02-21 22:05:33)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-16 23:52:55

[solved]Trouble Connecting to Prosody Server from Outside Home Network

#2 2016-02-17 05:29:49

Re: [solved]Trouble Connecting to Prosody Server from Outside Home Network

#3 2016-02-19 01:29:14

Re: [solved]Trouble Connecting to Prosody Server from Outside Home Network

#4 2016-02-19 05:09:32

Re: [solved]Trouble Connecting to Prosody Server from Outside Home Network

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