Pulling my hair out - cannot access port on server

[JPS]

Hi guys

I have a problem and i'm pulling my hair out! I have SMT breathing down my neck and my NM is off school.

We have just had port 8443 opened for one of our servers (so my VLE can talk to my API) and the first thing I need to do is test this port. I was advised to try connecting by telnet

telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 8443 (I have obviously not used xxx's in the real thing)

The connection does not work. I have tried this process using both the external and internal IP with no success. As far as I can see there is no firewall on the server and the windows firewall is turned off, however I did add a port exception in Windows firewall just in case.

I was hoping someone knowledgable could point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

[Admiral208]

do you have to use a colon?

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8443

[theriver]

Hi

Exactly what behaviour are you seeing when you telnet, and what are you expecting to see? Some services will talk back to you immediately (SMTP is an obvious example) whereas some will just give you a blank screen upon a successful connection.

Nmap might be a better test of whether a port is open.

[glennda]

try downloading nmap and scanning the server to see if it is listening on that port

[JPS]

Thanks so far guys. Have now established I need to open that port on our ISA server. The challenge continues!

[glennda]

Thanks so far guys. Have now established I need to open that port on our ISA server. The challenge continues!

Thats pretty simple - you just need to create an access rule from that machine to external and external to that machine using the ports specified - if its one specific ip that needs to connect to then i would use that rather then external as its more secure.

[JPS]

That NMAP is really good. Such a quick way to test the ports!

My VLE has a handful of IPs so presumably I set up an access rule for each one, as I agree that has to be more secure than just opening it up to the whole world.

[glennda]

you can setup one rule with access to a computer group (i think its called that!) and just put all the ips of the external connection to it.

[JPS]

im getting so close now I can nearly smell success. I have the console on the ISA server and am now working through the access rule wizard. Fingers crossed.