Wyzcrak

At my house, I've had Windows File Sharing working on my WinXP Pro box for quite some time, and I'm using SMB such that all of the traffic travels over port 445. I do have a hardware firewall, but the port 445 is forwarded to my WinXP Pro box for both TCP and UDP.

I cannot stress enough that this has been working for months upon months. The name of the shared folder on my box is Export. I have SUCCESSFULLY been mounting \\my.domain.name\Export as a network drive from work, over the Internet, for some time. I'd copy files from the share to my desktop at work, no problem. I'd play songs from my home share in my work machine's Winamp, no problem.

Then one day it doesn't work. BAM, out of nowhere. I hadn't changed a THING.

I attempt to connect from SEVERAL remote sources, suspecting a network change at work is to blame. But no... nothing outside my home LAN is able to connect to the share on my home box. All the boxes in the LAN can connect to the share without issue.

And I'm not talking authentication here. They can't "connect." The error is something like "the network name cannot be found." While I've always mounted using the DNS address of my machine (the same FQDN in my DNS records as is assigned to the WinXP box itself), I tried mounting via DNS address and IP address. No luck.

netstat -a:

TCP home:microsoft-ds home.digitalcreations.cc:0 LISTENING
UDP home:microsoft-ds *:*

services file:

microsoft-ds 445/tcp
microsoft-ds 445/udp

I've called the ISP, asking if they placed a block on that port via some means. They claim that I am behind no firewall, and no ports are blocked. :?

So, what do I do? I've double-checked all of the settings on my WinXP box, but I've no reason to think any of them is incorrect as one day this was working and the next day it was not. When I telnet from the outside world to 445 of my house, the connection is not refused. It just connects and sits there. This is the only validation I've done that my firewall is routing properly. Several, several other applications route through the firewall as we speak; I really don't have a reason to suspect firewall failure/oddities.

I do install every Windows Update "fix" that comes down the pipe. Maybe one of those is to blame.

I just don't know. All I know is, accessing my home files from work was never so easy, and I'd really like to have that luxury back. I have SCP and file transfer via VNC, but it just isn't as convenient.

Anything you guys can do to help me here would really be appreciated.

Wyzcrak

P.S. If you have comments about the validity of sharing files on the Internet, I really don't want them tainting this thread. If you feel compelled to share them with me, please PM me.

Quarath

Is your IP Address from your internet provider static or dynamic. Some dynamic IP's don't change very often so you may have the same one for several months then all of a sudden have a different one. Check your router and see what the WAN IP address beeing assigned is and if it is the same as what you are attempting to access.

Wyzcrak

Good call, but...

... what I meant was that SCP and VNC are working flawlessly from the outside world, one of the many ways I have of knowing that I've got all of my addresses right.

Wyzcrak

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Quarath

my bad for skimming

Cobra

I found the networking in XP to be flakey in MY exp. I run 2000 Pro on all my machines...

verbose

I was going to run a tcptraceroute for you from my location, until I found out that the provider I'm on at this moment filters TCP 139 and 445, even though the techs I just spoke to swear they don't. I emailed them the evidence that they do; waiting for them to remove those blasted filters, then I'll have a look.

verbose

(Assuming your host is the "home.digitalcreations.cc" listed in your netstat output)

Something is filtering TCP port 445. It's either the egress interface right before your local cable hop, or something local on your end. It's "filtered" too, as in "packet is dropped on the floor, nothing is sent back to the packet source", not a "port is closed" RST response.