Connection issues

We've been having a problem I can't seem to solve. The Mud we play at doesn't seem to have an answer for us either, or doesn't want to provide one, either way I was hoping maybe someone else had seen this issue before and could help us out of this delema.

Here is the problem.
We have played at the same mud for several years with the same setup.

I/we have an satellite ISP, Windows 2000 and XP. fire walled machines with client software allowed, and we own and use a registered version of the client software. Suddenly 3 weeks ago we could no longer connect to the LPmud we play at using the normal remote ports of 3000 and 5000. Each and every attempt to connect that way leads to being clipped almost immediately or within a few moments of connection. However we can connect to them using the slow Telnet port of 23. (with either telnet, or the client program on 23)

At first I thought perhaps our isp was treating the client program as a p2p and dropping it, but after connecting to several other mud's I don't believe that is the issue. Has anyone ever seen this?

The only thing I could conclude was that the mud itself was rejecting connections from us on those ports, although the owners claim this isn't so. I don't see why they would do such a thing since we pay VAF's to play there and have purchased their client software. Any help would be much appreciated as we are 3 complete mud addicts, and the telnet port on said mud is very slow and not worth VAFing for it's use.

I'm not really sure what is going on, this could be any number of things, but why is the telnet port so slow compared to these other ports?

See this, which may help:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=8369

It may help to use WireShark:

http://www.wireshark.org/

That is a network protocol analyzer, it may help you to find what IP address is dropping your connection. Since it is fast, by the sound of it, you are getting a network NAK rather than a timeout. If you use WireShark you may find who is generating it (eg. your ISP, or the game site).



Offhand I think you are hitting a firewall somewhere, and your ISP is a likely cause. Have you tried the ports 3000 and 5000 to a different game? Not just any port?

Firewall rules can be very specific, they can disallow port 3000 to a particular IP address if they want to. Maybe your traffic has been high enough that they have done exactly that. You could try contacting them.

Try FireWire, set it to filter only traffic to/from your MUD 's IP address (to cut down the huge amount of stuff that will appear) and try to work out which IP address is dropping the connection.

Hey folks, thanks a lot for your advice. I'll give it a try right away and let you know what I come up with. Thanks for the links also. I have no idea why port 23 is so slow on the mud I'm at, but for some reason it is terribly slow. Perhaps it's something to do with what is interfering with the other ports 3000/5000 that 23 is sneaking past.

Just thinking offhand, I would agree with Nick and suggest checking your Firewall. Try creating a permissive rule for any program on the relevant ports. Did you install any new software lately that might be interfering with your net traffic?

Unlikely to be the cause, , but if you have a router, it couldn't hurt to try forwarding the ports. If you don't know how to forward ports, I suggest taking a look at this page, it has guides specific to hundreds of routers--
http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm

On the topic of routers, if you have a WRT54G or similar router, you can replace the firmware with third party firmware, such as DD-WRT or Tomato. I recommend Tomato, you can check it out here--
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

It's a bit more lean and I like the bandwidth monitoring charts in comparison to DD-WRT. DD-WRT is compatible with a lot more routers, and more maintained (I'll probably switch from Tomato). And for your purposes, DD-WRT has really easy to use QoS (Quality of Service), this will let you prioritize your bandwidth for specific IPs and ports. So if you did download other software (or if you have a unsecured wireless router and someone is stealing your bandwidth to download things) that is sucking up bandwidth, you can give net traffic from your computer to the game IP and ports a high priority. Probably won't help this situation (I still would think to check your software firewall), but useful information.