connection refused from external network

[robo]

hi all,

are there any special configuration items i need to pay attention to when trying to run jboss AS from a machine in my internal network behind a firewall/router?

i'll apologize right off and say that i'm not positive my problem is a jboss problem.

my problem: i can start jboss AS 4.04.GA on a machine in my internal network and successfully access it from any other machine in my network, but when i try to access it from outside my network i get "The connection was refused when attempting to contact <WAN_IP>:8080", just like i get when attempting to access a port that i know is closed.

i have a static IP from my ISP and a DSL router that can forward port requests for that IP to various internal machines. the machine i'm trying to forward port 8080 requests to is a linux box running FC4. i configured iptables to accept tcp connections on port 8080.

what i've tried so far to no avail:

1. disable the linux firewall altogether
2. start jboss on a different port since the linux box seems to believe port 8080 is for webcache service (which i don't know anything about)
3. edit the server.xml file in jbossweb-tomcat50.sar to change the tomcat host name reference to my static IP instead of "localhost" in case there was some binding problem
4. start jboss with 'run.sh -b<WAN_IP>
5. configure iptables on the jboss machine to forward port 80 requests to port 8080, and then try to access jboss through port 80 from external network


i'm sort of at a loss. something is clearly shutting down requests on that port. i know the port forwarding works in general since i've had success routing mysql and http requests on their respective ports. but nothing in my router log, linux security log, or jboss log is telling me who is refusing the connection.

thanks for any help or suggestions on how to even diagnose the problem!

[peterj]

My vote goes to the router as being the culprit.

Try this. Hook your PC directly to the DSL modem and then try accessing it externally. If that works, then it confirms that the router is the issue. If it doesn't work, you need to get in touch with the DSL technical support to find out why they are blocking the request.

If the router is the issue, then you need to recheck the router's configuration, especially the firewall. I know that the router I have came out of the box with the firewall set to block all incoming requests.

Good luck.

[robo]

thanks peter! even my dsl router does port forwarding, but no matter how i configure things i can't get port 8080 requests through. i read somewhere else on the web that sometimes ISPs block arbitrarily high port numbers - maybe that is what is happening.

rather than fight it, i just changed jboss to run on port 80 since i know those requests go through. seems to be working now.

thanks for the suggestion - it definitely helped me narrow it down.

rob