Cannot See My Server From My Own Network

[Dragineez]

I have a problem that is similar but subtly different than these threads:

http://forums.srcds.com/showthread.php?tid=5124&pid=27084#pid27084
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/585/%7Bpage%7D

My server is visible to the outside world.

http://dragineez.com:8774
http://fpsmeter.org/p,view;120185.html

If I'm in a game, people can join in. I haven't had anyone try to connect and play their own game, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work. If I create a lobby and use mm_dedicated_forceserver to connect to the local IP address, everyone in the lobby except myself fails to join game (which makes sense). However, I cannot resolve to the real external IP address.

The problem is that when I'm at home, on the same LAN as the server, I can only see it by its local IP address. Any links, references, etc. that "go out and come back" don't see anything. I'm running a TeamSpeak3 server on that same box and I had to change all the banner URLs to the external address so outside users could see them (makes perfect sense). But now I cannot see any of the banner graphics. Likewise with the game server banner and motd. External users can see them, I cannot. Not at home on the same network anyway. Because of this symptom, it's definately a network issue of some kind - not a srcds issue (same symptom, different server software, same server, same network). Strange thing is that, from the server I can ping dragineez.com and it comes back with the correct external IP address.

Server is in the DMZ, so it's not a port forwarding issue. Router config for DMZ is by ethernet port, not IP. It can't be plugged into the wrong port or the outside world wouldn't see it.

I have a friend with a very similar set-up (FIOS, local web/teamspeak/game server, DNS entry) that does and always has resolved back to itself. I'm stumped.

Any hints or advice would be appreciated.

[ChrisFinlayson]

Got a firewall running?

[Dragineez]

(04-01-2011, 10:03 AM)ChrisFinlayson Wrote:  Got a firewall running?

The Verizon FIOS router/firewall is definately the problem.

From: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/NAT_Loopback_Routers

Quote:Many DSL routers/modems prevent loopback connections as a security feature. This means that a machine on your local network (e.g. behind your DSL router/modem) cannot connect to a forward facing IP address (such as 199.149.252.44) of a machine that it also on your local network. Connecting to the local IP address (such as 192.168.2.40) of that same machine works fine.

So this is a NAT loopback issue. Verizon has disabled NAT loopback and there's no way to turn it on (enable an inside the firewall client to reflect back to itself from the outside). Since this is a L4D/L4D2 server, I want to use the lobby system and can't. I ~think~ someone outside of my network doing mm_dedicated_forceserver dragineez.com:27015, creating a lobby, then starting a game would work. But I cannot do it.

Modifying the host file won't fix that problem either.

A PITA, but the whole purpose of this wasn't to create a long-term dedicated server. I just wanted to learn how to set-up, configure, manage, and use it on a platform where I can afford to make mistakes. Good plan as I've been making tons of them. Besides, this box doesn't really have to horsepower to be a real game server. Does the web and teamspeak functions well enough, but the game server is laggy as hell.

Once I'm more comfortable I'll rent a real game server.

OT, but - where can you mark a thread as solved?