What's blocking my port??

Hi all. I've been trying to setup software to view newsgroups on my system but whenever I try and connect I get errors regarding port119 (The port used for NNTP). I've tried removing all firewalls and have tried contacting my ISP to see if they have blocked the port but to no avail. I've tried an online port scan and it says that the port is stealthed. Does any know of a program I can use that will tell me what is blocking this port or suggest any alternatives that I can try? Hopefully someone out there can help me!

Are you using a router? if you are then you need to forward that port to your computer. Other than that, you must be using a firewall of somekind that is blocking the port (windows xp firewall by chance?)

Thanks for the quick reply. I am using a router but I disabled the routers firewall which I assumed would be enough to allow access to the port. I also uninstalled McAfee Internet Security and disabled the Windows XP firewall. Still no access through port 119. Am still open to suggestions for my next course of action. It's a Belkin router if that's of any use

like XTC46 said you have to foward the replies to that port to the computer thats waiting to receive them. other wise the router has no idea what to do with them.

look under the advanced setting of your router. look for something that indicates port mapping or fowarding maybe even gaming and applications. all routers are similar but differant.

you have to configure the port number and protocol along with the internal ip address of your computer. then enable it before it will work.

I have forwarded the port in the routers "Virtual Servers" section as shown in the picture attatched. I put the ip of the computer I'm trying to view newsgroups on in the ip box. Unfortunately I still cannot connect to the port.

Quote:

---

along with the internal ip address of your computer

---

Yeah, I put that in the "Private IP Address" box. Just blocked it out in the picture

If you just want to read the newsgroups then you don't have to open up port 119 on your machine. Scanning your system to see if port 119 is open is useless.

If you want to run a newsserver then you would need to open up port 119 inbound. But you don't need to run a server to read the newsgroups.

What is the exact error message you're getting?
What program are you using to read the newsgroups?

My guess is you didn't specify a proper newserver in the connection settings of whatever program you are using. What server are you trying to connect to?

My news server is news.wanadoo.co.uk. I tried pinging it and that worked no problem

Ok. But... (I hate sounding like a broken record...)
What error messages are you getting?
What program are you using to read the newsgroups?

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by Retorb
My news server is news.wanadoo.co.uk. I tried pinging it and that worked no problem

---

I can't exactly test this at work, but maybe someone else can test that address to see if its serving up news.

Doesn't look like it's the "right" one...

http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/jargon...ssaryTerm=NNTP

Odd. In this they're using news.wanadoo.co.uk.. Looks like they need to update their howto's...

And I highly recommend NOT using your real email address (unless you like recieving spam) and ditching outlook when you're serious about usenet.

Forte's Agent and XNews are way better for usenet...

Thanks for all the responses everyone

Right then, I'm trying to use Grabit to access newsgroups but I've also tried using Outlook Express just in case it was a problem with the way i had set up Grabit. When I try to refresh the group list in Grabit I get the error "unable to connect to news.wanadoo.co.uk: 119" In Outlook I get the error "The TCP/IP connection was unexpectedly terminated by the server" when I clcik on the details button I get the following:

Configuration:
Account: news.wanadoo.co.uk
Server: news.wanadoo.co.uk
Protocol: NNTP
Port: 119

I've also tried using variations of the newsgroup name. I've tried news.wanadoo.com, news.wanadoo.co.uk, news.freeserve.co.uk and news.freeserve.com. Wanadoo bought out freeserve so I think that's why it still says it on some of their support pages. As far as I can tell, news.wanadoo.co.uk is the correct address. I've been able to ping it so it seems to exist.

Any other suggestions?

Hey Hey,

I'm very sick and read this quickly... but I didn't see it mentioned. Have you checked with your ISP to see if they are filtering the port?

My last ISP filtered port 25 so that you had to use their mail servers (it's supposedly to filter mass mailing worms (or so their tech support claimed)... but in reality it was so all your email had to pass through them... nosey little bastards.

Anyways... my current ISP limits where you can connect for Newsgroups... They used to have it opened up and have their own newsgroups but there was too much piracy.. people could download at faster than their "cap" because they were inside the ISP network... However, now they've gone with a third party and capped the speed on top of that... as well as limitting which news servers you can and can't connect to..

Anyways.. just my 2cents.

Peace,
HT

You could test it using telnet or netcat..

telnet news.wanadoo.co.uk 119 should result in a banner something like this:
200 news.wanadoo.co.uk NNRP Service Ready (posting ok)

If you don't get a connection it's probably not running.
I tried it from my own ISP to news.wanadoo.co.uk but I didn't get a connection.
But this could also mean Wanadoo has shielded off it's newsserver from people using other providers.

Did you contact their support and explained your problems?

They may have misunderstood your problem and thought you asked them if they blocked port 119 to your machine. But that's totally irrelevant in this case. You seem to have problems connecting to their port 119.

Another thing I had some problems with: did you disable the firewall software or did you actually uninstall it? I had some problems where disabling didn't fully disable the firewall, I had to do a full uninstall and reboot before it would work.