Connection problem. Help required.

[Peter]

Hi all,

In the last week there have been two separate occasions where a new user of JoinFS has been unable to connect successfully to a session, so I suspect it might be a recently introduced bug.

The possible bug appears to cause the connection to almost complete but fail. So if person A joins person B, person B will see person A in the session user list and the aircraft list. The details are shown correctly including nickname and callsign, however, the connection status says 'No' and highlighted in orange. The person A that connected will not see anyone else in the session user list, but a message in the monitor window says that a connection was made. It appears that this happens to person A no matter which session they join.

Basically, if you come across this problem could you report it here, and if possible spend a bit of time with me in an attempt to debug the problem.

By the way, it is not a port forward issue since the same thing happened with or without port forwarding enabled.

Thanks,
Peter

[Roggeberg27]

Hello Peter,

Two hours ago I tried to start a JoinFS session with a friend of mine. Normally we use the DigitalThemePark hub. And everything works fine. But not this afternoon. I checked with another friend. Same problem. I installed version 1.7.5 on 18-2-2021 and asked my friends to install 1.7.5 as well. But that did not solve the problem.

It seems we all came into the situation you describe as person A.

Kind regards,
Luuk Bakkum

[RG71]

Hi Peter,

I'm familiar with the new users situation for longer than a month now, however I have same issue since today, as a long-time user. Everything worked fine until yesterday, didn't change anything myself, but it suddenly stopped functioning overnight. It now behaves just as you described. Sadly my lack of knowledge about debugging won't help to solve the issue.

Good luck!

[Peter]

It seems this is affecting quite a few people, but that's a good thing because I should be able to track it down now.

First of all it would be useful to know which version of JoinFS the problem started happening. Can you remember which version update gave you the problem? If you can't remember exactly which version, could you try 1.7.0, 1.7.3 and 1.7.4 from https://pmem.uk/joinfs/archive.html. When going back a version you will need to uninstall JoinFS first.

If you could come onto Discord, https://discord.com/invite/3tnbAWaG7D at some point, then it will be easier to track it down.

Thanks,
Peter

[Roggeberg27]

Hi Peter,

I just did the test with version 1.7.0, but I get the same result as with 1.7.5 this afternoon. I don't think it is very usefull to test the other versions. Unless you think I should do it, than I will test all four versions. And I can test for FSX and P3Dv4 if you like.

To add: I used JoinFS last thursday evening, and I am almost 100% sure I installed version 1.7.5 in the afternoon. To be on the newest release for the flight in the evening.

Kind regards, Luuk

P.S. It is almost dinner time, so I will not react immediately for the first 1 to 1,5 hour .

[Peter]

I just did the test with version 1.7.0, but I get the same result as with 1.7.5 this afternoon. I don't think it is very usefull to test the other versions. Unless you think I should do it, than I will test all four versions. And I can test for FSX and P3Dv4 if you like.

Ideally I need to sort this out with someone on Discord. It would take forever on this forum.

Peter

[Roggeberg27]

I just created an account on Discord. Have to wait another few minutes before I am allowed to speak.

[pletheron]

Hi Peter,

We at the 91st BG have encountered this problem today. To me, it looks network related. All the users (3 of 9) affected are on Cogent's network. Those being in the 38.x.x.x network. When one of these users join, sometimes they pop in for about 10 seconds and the disapear. Looking at their logs shows they connect and then the nodes of all users in the session are removed. All of the problem users are " un-pingable." That may just be Cogent's policy though. All the other users in the session are "pingable."If you would like to do some debug, I can meet you on TS at the 91st BG "Stag and Star" in the Digital Theme Park channel.

Terry

[Peter]

Thanks Terry. Currently looking into the problem with someone else. What's really strange is that this problem and another seem to have emerged by itself rather than in a specific update. There was a Windows update recently, but at the moment I think that's probably just a coincidence.

Peter

[red_SYSTEM]

Hi Peter,

Today I tried JoinFS with a friend who recently got involved in flight sim and thus never used JoinFS. Last time I used it was probably in 2018. We experience the same issues. We've tried version 1.5.12 and the development build and still not able to connect. I was person A and my friend person B, no matter who created the session. I tried it in my old laptop as well wat does have P3D installed but never used JoinFS. Same issues. Note worthy about this laptop is that Windows Updates hasn't been done in quite a time. Its Windows 10 1909 with OS build 17763.1158. My PC was person A, laptop person B.

Richard

[Peter]

Hi all,

Good news. Problem found. Thanks to those that were able to help in tracking it down.

For those that may be interested, it stemmed from the web page http://ipv4.icanhazip.com/, which JoinFS uses to obtain your external internet IP4 address. However, in the last week or so this page has started returning an IPv6 address (probably for those that have IP6 enabled on their system).

Fortunately, I have a solution, and will try to get this out in the next few days. The down side is that this affects all older version of JoinFS, so there's no point in installing those to avoid it.

Thanks for you patience.
Peter

[Peter]

A request to anyone getting the recent connection problems. Could you reply and let me know if you get an IPv4 or IPv6 result from each of these pages:

http://ipv4.icanhazip.com/
http://ipinfo.io/ip
https://api.ipify.org/
https://checkip.amazonaws.com/

Thanks,
Peter

[red_SYSTEM]

My ISP is IPv6 supported.

http://ipv4.icanhazip.com/: IPv6
http://ipinfo.io/ip: IPv4
https://api.ipify.org/: IPv4
https://checkip.amazonaws.com/: IPv4

[Peter]

My ISP is IPv6 supported.

http://ipv4.icanhazip.com/: IPv6
http://ipinfo.io/ip: IPv4
https://api.ipify.org/: IPv4
https://checkip.amazonaws.com/: IPv4

Thank you very much!
Test version out very soon.

Peter

[Peter]

Test version 2.0.4 now available, https://pmem.uk/joinfs/development.html

Please note 2.x.x is incompatible with 1.x.x.

Peter