[Xitami] Windows client: opening non-standard ports

[Thomas J. Hruska]

At 09:28 PM 6/25/2003 +0200, Marc Doigny writeth:
>Hello
>
>I have no problem connecting to my server running on any port using windows 
>98 with its supplied Internet explorer.
>The server is running fine for years now. Our corporate ISP only allows for 
>10 MB of webspace, so i place some material on our local server.
>The standard port 80 is already in use and i have to use an alternate port. 
>119 is available.

Port 119 is a port for news servers.  My guess is that HINTERNET (the
specific API IE uses for retrieving data from the web) sees port 119 and
attempts to connect as a news browser instead of HTTP (or refuses the
connection altogether since it usually doesn't understand the news protocol
- there are also mapping files on the hard drive that may be affecting
this).  My suggestions to you are:

1)  Check your firewall settings and maybe temporarily drop the firewall
altogether to see if it is a firewall issue and not a browser issue.
2)  Change to another port and have your ISP forward to that port instead
of 119.
3)  Verify that your ISP is not blocking port 119 from specific packet types.
4)  Get a packet sniffer and watch what happens to requests for that
particular site if you can't change the port number.

Hope this helps!


          Thomas J. Hruska -- shinelight@shininglightpro.com
Shining Light Productions -- "Meeting the needs of fellow programmers"
                  http://www.shininglightpro.com/