Help Needed. Newbs having trouble connecting Cooperatively

January 1, 2023

Hi. I've been a long-time user to IL-2 & having 3 set-ups here in my home, I'm lucky enough to have enjoyed many hours of coop fun with friends visiting etc. We've got together a little band of flyers and we fly missions that I am asked to create. Missions that contain a hefty amount of media files to be fair, but which we've had absolutely no troubles with at all.

Now. I've given one of my setups to my son, who has gotten into IL-2 in a big way. Naturally we intend to fly from here with the two existing setups I have here, & for my son to join in as per normal from his address.

And I have just realised how much of a novice I am to the arts of multiplayer, servers etc. I basically thought there was next to no change. Like we've always done, one person 'creates' the 'Cooperative Server', gives it a password etc, & good to go. The other two 'Join' & you're off into the mission.

Now, however, when we try the same thing, two of us here, my son at his address, regardless that we have the same coop missions & media files on our systems as we've always had, with no problems, I will create the coop server as normal, he will attempt to join, then IL-2 basically all-but-crashes (freezes) for at least 10 mins before an 'unable to connect' message comes up. So then swapping it around; he hosts, I join ... my Il-2 does the same ... crashes.

In short ... I'm asking for help as to what we are possibly doing wrong? Is it indeed possible to carry on doing what we were doing as with when we had 3 machines on the same wifi.

What glaringly obvious thing are we missing? I will admit to knowing next to nothing about network setups, servers, ports, routers etc.

I've included the basic settings we have always used. We've messed around with the ping setting & to avail). I know it's not the missions because we have tried the generic example coops etc & with the same results.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. My son has had his setup at his address for over 2 months now & not once have we managed to connect successfully. Any time there's a session involving 3 set ups, he has pack up & bring all of his setup & gear to mine, whereby all 3 work flawlessly as usual.

Many thanks in advance & a HNY to all.

January 1, 2023

Looks like the one that hosts the mission will need to open/forward a few ports on his router to allow traffic from/to client and server.

Default ports and protocols are 28000 udp and tcp, and 28100 tcp.

How to configure the router will depend on what brand/model it is...

(It was not an issue before as you were all on the same LAN)

Good Luck, Have Fun...

January 1, 2023

Thank you for your reply.

January 1, 2023

37 minutes ago, GSHWK_Houndstone_Hawk said:

Thank you for your reply.

You are welcome

but ... LOL... that kinda sounds like you appreciate the response, yet that response is of no help to you at all ... !

January 1, 2023

We do seem to have sussed it out & to which I thank you very much indeed. It really was of great help.

But now we're now having problems with the IL-2 SRS (SimpleRadio) software that we use. When all 3 pc's were under the umbrella of one roof, we would all simply open up the IL2-SRS Server & keep it running, start IL-2, then the main IL2-SRS CLIENT. We'd all put the IP address of the main pc, followed by a colon, then the port number ... & in the server field to the left we would have the IL-2 server address of 127.0.0.1, then connect ... brilliant.

But what needs to change now that we are trying to connect from 2 locations?

I just assumed nothing changed ... as long as the guest connecting, has the IP & port number of the pc he/she is connecting to, along with the IL-2 Server IP, then all good?

I do confess to not having the ability to get my head around the whole server, client, port thing. Struggling to find a 'layman's terms' guide as I haven't a clue what TCP, UDP, IvP etc all means.

I guess I've been spoilt by having it 'all' under one roof ?

Edited January 1, 2023 by GSHWK_Houndstone_Hawk

January 1, 2023

Having it all under one roof makes it easier... adding the Internet to it adds lots of complexity, as we need to keep it safe and shift ...

So, just ask your kid to move back into your house, and problem solved!

For SRS it's basically the same in the end.

The remote SRS client needs to connect to the (external) IP address of your router and on your router you need to forward the port/protocol that SRS uses to the (local) address of the Pc running the SRS-Server...

January 2, 2023

Yeah much easier indeed. So what do you mean by a 'remote' SRS client? (Is that the IL2-SRS Client app that my son is using?).

And how would I find out which port/protocal (again no idea what this is ?), IL2-SRS uses? I had a look on my router page and I can see an ILS Server , would that be it?

So the machine that's now 'out-of-house' needs my 'router IP' & not my PC 'IP'? And I need to find out somewhere what a port/protocol is & which one is used by IL2-SRS?

Been combat flight simming for 2 and a half decades but I think my multiplayer ventures will be extremely short-lived. ?

January 2, 2023

Mêh... not to worry...we can get this fixed.

It's not ILS Server is hat you need. I think

'Remote' vs 'Local' ... indeed, it's all very relative!

When talking to you, yes, you are the local guy, and your son is the remote guy. And the SRS client he's using.

So, the 'out of house' machine will need your external IP address, ie. your routers IP address, not your PC.s IP to connect to.

Your router needs to be told where to assign the SRS traffic to, as that will be the internal/local IP address of your PC. The PC where SRS Server is running...

As I do not use the IL2 SRS stuff, I do not know what ports/protocols it uses? Sorry about that. I am an old git using TeamSpeak

January 2, 2023

15 minutes ago, DD_FT- said:

Mêh... not to worry...we can get this fixed.

It's not ILS Server is hat you need. I think

'Remote' vs 'Local' ... indeed, it's all very relative!

When talking to you, yes, you are the local guy, and your son is the remote guy. And the SRS client he's using.

So, the 'out of house' machine will need your external IP address, ie. your routers IP address, not your PC.s IP to connect to.

Your router needs to be told where to assign the SRS traffic to, as that will be the internal/local IP address of your PC. The PC where SRS Server is running...

As I do not use the IL2 SRS stuff, I do not know what ports/protocols it uses? Sorry about that. I am an old git using TeamSpeak

Old git or no ... you're a bloody diamond & very kind to be giving up time & valuable info to a networking dullard like me. I do confess to being a little confused with how to tell my plusnet router to commune with my local machine.

I had IL-2 come up in my games/applications drop down in the Advanced Settings -> Port Forwarding page but I have nothing that seems to mention IL2-SRS or similar (just this ILS Server), so don't know quite how I'd set that up.

With IL-2, using your previous help, I was able to select IL-2 in the router pages, then assign ports 28000-28100 TCP & 28000 UDP but don't quite know how to do it with an application that's not listed. There seems no way to be able to do it any other way.

Either way ... the info that you've very kindly broken down into bite-size & managable chunks, I'll try later tomorrow when all parties are present & correct & will report on the outcome.

In the mean time ... many many thanks to you DD

HH

January 2, 2023

1 hour ago, GSHWK_Houndstone_Hawk said:

...

I had IL-2 come up in my games/applications drop down in the Advanced Settings -> Port Forwarding page but I have nothing that seems to mention IL2-SRS or similar (just this ILS Server), so don't know quite how I'd set that up.

With IL-2, using your previous help, I was able to select IL-2 in the router pages, then assign ports 28000-28100 TCP & 28000 UDP but don't quite know how to do it with an application that's not listed. There seems no way to be able to do it any other way.

...

See "SRS comm server" in your third screenshot above. I'm assuming that you need to specify your SRS PC address in SRS comm server and then add that address to the port forwarding list in your router.

See the "Setup for Servers" section of this post for more details.

Edited January 2, 2023 by JimTM

January 2, 2023

10 hours ago, JimTM said:

See "SRS comm server" in your third screenshot above. I'm assuming that you need to specify your SRS PC address in SRS comm server and then add that address to the port forwarding list in your router.

See the "Setup for Servers" section of this post for more details.

Oh ... now I'm really confused. I just assumed, as per IL-2 SRS instructions, that the in-game SRS Comm server stayed at that default address. Ok thanks. Back to the drawing board. I'll have a look at the link you kindly sent.

January 2, 2023

We appear to be getting very confused with this IL2-SRS now (having always been using it on a 3-pc network on the same WiFi, now one PC has flown the nest and we suddenly find ourselves in an alien world full of ports, protocols etc.

Here's what we've done so far. Ensured that both IL2-SRS Server & Client exe's are running with administrator privileges on all 3 pc's (2 here, still on the same network, & my son's in a different location).

Chosen a host PC (the main PC here with me) & by using the trial version of Port Forward Network Utilities, I guess I've opened the port 6002 on my router, pic1 (although not entirely convinced because I had to use the custom application menu & I could've typed any old thing as the application ... how would the utilities software know which piece of software I'm actually referring to?).

I've gone in to create server within IL-2 & changed the SRS Comm Server to that of my public IP address (again, so confused with IP's, didn't realise you had a local, public, as well as a router address ... is the public IP the right IP to use?) pic2.

With me on my main PC, intending as the host, I am running both the IL2-SRS Server in the background as well as the IL2-SRS Client. On the latter, I have the client fields set as shown in pic3 (as I read somewhere that you had to use the default 127.0.0.1 if connecting to the server on the same local pc.

With my second PC (on the same network * ruuning the IL2-SRS Client only), I have successfully connected tp the main PC using the client fileds set shown in pic4 (note showing as 2 clients connected successfully). The 1st field is my main PC's local IP address. (It didn't work using public IP etc).

It all falls down when my son attempts to connect as we're not really sure what goes where and I must admit to finding Jason's instructions a little vague but that may well be down to me & my lack of networking experience. He too is only running the IL2-SRS Client exe.

Pic5 shows his client settings. Now I assumed that he had to mirror my IL-2 SRS Comm server settings (i.e. my public address followed by the port number) in the left-hand field (but we're not sure what goes in the 2nd due to very vague instructions or lack of understanding more likely). Notice that he is showing as having a green plug connected to IL-2 but that's it.

**If someone would possibly be so kind as to provide us with a client set up, maybe a picture etc, to let us know what we're doing wrong, what we should be putting in the right-hand field & maybe clear up the confusion as to ... is it the public address and not the router address for the SRS Comm server etc?

Any help, as has already been provided by DD & Jim, would be really very appreciated. Would be 'lovely' to spend a couple hours flying instead of days 3 clueless individuals sinking in a network hell. ?

Edited January 2, 2023 by GSHWK_Houndstone_Hawk

January 2, 2023

This is my understanding:

The public IP address is your router address.
On your SRS server PC, you can get this address from website ip4.me.
Put the public IP address and port in the SRS comm server box in IL-2 Server Identity settings.
You can get your SRS server PC address as follows: In the Windows search box, type "cmd" and press enter. Then in the "Command Prompt" window, type "ipconfig". The SRS server PC address is the value beside "IPv4 address"
Forward your public IP address and port 6002 to your SRS server PC address and port 6002 (TCP and UDP).
In the SRS client on the remote PC (i.e., your son's PC), put the public IP address and port of the SRS server in the box above the Connect button.

I hope I have that right. Someone much smarter than me should be along to set us all straight.

Edited January 2, 2023 by JimTM

January 2, 2023

Ok. Basically it's up & running & with no shortage of thanks to both JimTM & DD_FT- ... as I followed both of your instructions & was getting no where but it was apparently an issue with this port 6002. I had to 'guess' on what to call the IL-2 SRS application for my Plusnet ONE hub to recognise it. Even though that Port Forward Network Untilities program said it had successfully opened it, it actually hadn't so I noticed what PFNU program was 'labelling' IL2-SRS as, and used that identifier within my Router to set up the necessary port as open & hey ... it worked.

The correct label btw was IL2-SR-Server. So to both of you ... many heartfelt thanks for your time & kindness, & a HNY to all.

Edited January 2, 2023 by GSHWK_Houndstone_Hawk

January 2, 2023

You're welcome GHH.

January 2, 2023

You are welcome, and thanks for keeping us updated, and for reporting the solution here!

Help Needed. Newbs having trouble connecting Cooperatively

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