Connection Issues And What To Provide

[Zacchaeus]

My LAN user is not having a problem. It's the Mac/PC users in their network (they are several towns away) where the PC user can't connect (yet they use the same ISP we do - a local one: Altice/Cablevision). That's what makes this a really fascinating issue. If it wasn't for the fact that network protocols are (or should be) platform agnostic, it's almost shaking down that PC users can't connect to a campaign hosted on a Mac and based on Theaskus, Mac users can't connect to a campaign hosted on a PC.

My comment wasn't directed at you but to the post above mine.

[Atanae]

Terribly sorry!

[Thelaskus]

Thanks Zacchaeus!

I'll give this a shot and report back! I'm fairly certain I had them try and connect via Cloud and using my GM username. Thanks for the suggestion!

[LordEntrails]

Its not as simple as just cross platform. I've been running games on FGU for about 4 weeks. I host on Windows 10 and have a player on Mac 10.15 and have no problems.

[Thelaskus]

So last night I was able to test with one of my Mac Users. His first attempt to connect failed:

[5/20/2020 6:20:27 PM] FGU v4.0.0 FREE (2020-05-17)
[5/20/2020 6:20:27 PM] Launcher scene starting.
[5/20/2020 6:20:34 PM] [<color="red">ERROR</color>] Unable to update session list from lobby server.

I didn't see any attempt in my Network Log so, I dropped the game and brought it back up as Cloud / Private and had them retry.

They mentioned seeing:

Cloud server with the requested name is not registered with the lobby server

Had them try again and -then- they popped in. First time I'd ever seen a Mac User connect and I was overjoyed. We chatted for a little bit via the chat function. I had them disconnect and reconnect and they could once again get back in.

So, this tells me a couple of things:

Doesn't appear to be cross platform (In Support of LordEntrails Comment)
It does appear to be sporadic (Needs to be tested further as I have three Mac Users that I need to attempt to get online).
I know that it's functionally possible of having a Mac user connect to a PC Host (In Support of LordEntrails Comment)

My next test is to try and get all users connected at once and see if anybody has any issues loading my assets and loading the source books.

That said, there is progress. I'll report back as I have more.

[Atanae]

Ok, I made some forward motion. First thing to note is that the host computer (a Mac) has both ethernet and wi-fi running. There are legitimate use cases for this. Ethernet is prioritized in the Mac settings, but it was the IP address of the wifi that held the 1802 port. Apparently you can't set both IPs with the same port, unless there is a setting I can't find. In any event, part of he problem I believe had to do with the computer connecting to the cloud but the wireless holding 1802. This may explain why the Macs reconciled and the PCs didn't, because the OS "just understood" what to do while the PCs were like "what is this garbage?"

I then switched to LAN and had folks try, with no luck. In fact, my Mac players couldn't connect - but this is a good thing, because this means it's an issue I can work with.

The other issue is that when presented with TWO choices, FG did not honor the Mac's network prioritization and kept selecting the wifi. I never noticed this because in my old network, my Mac's ethernet IP was always a lower number and in the mesh it's a higher number. So I now have 1802 on the IP address I need.

I relaunch FG and it kept insisting on using the wifi. So I turned off the wifi, connected to the campaign via LAN. I then turned wifi back on. I had my husband connect on his Mac via internal IP. It worked. I had my PC friend connect - the Comcast one - SUCCESS! And first time connect after days of failure.

To the tl;dnr - if you are HOSTING on a Mac and have both wifi AND ethernet: a) make sure Port 1802 is open on the ETHERNET IP; b) make sure you turn OFF wifi before launching FG; c) Make sure you use LAN; d) Make sure FG is reporting the internal and external IP addresses for your ethernet connection; e) you can turn ON wifi afterwards; f) make sure your players's FG are at the same version - 2020-05-14 for PC 2020-05-17 for Mac as of this writing.

This does not cover the use cases where the Mac host is either ethernet only or wifi only - it only covers when both network protocols are active on the host machine at the time you are launching FG.

[Dire Weasel]

Bingo Atanae!

I have both WiFi and Ethernet running on my Mac, as that's extremely common.

A player was able to successfully join when I had my WiFi turned off, but not when it was on.

This feels very much like the problem!

Logs attached.

[Dire Weasel]

... and the player logs.

[Neovirtus]

After a bit of reading, it seems to be a pretty common issue with various use cases. Macs don't honor the network priority you set, they always try to use Wifi unless you force it by turning it off and initiating the connection over ethernet. So I suppose it's not a FG issue, though maybe there is an issue as to why your players couldn't connect to you via your wifi IP.

[pablomaz]

Hey guys!
This kind of thing is happening all the time with my group (DM has to use the Cloud Server). We have all kind of troubles connecting to the DM, and later on we are randomly disconnected. Is there any updates on these issues? Tks.

[<color="red">ERROR</color>] NETWORK: Noble Connect [10692166]: Shutting down because of a fatal error: Lost connection to relay server
[5/22/2020 1:09:38 AM] Fatal network engine error occurred. [Lost connection to relay server]
[5/22/2020 1:09:38 AM] [<color="red">ERROR</color>] Game server connection was lost. Returning to launcher.