Windows client cannot ping other windows client

ThomasShirk

OK let me preface this by stating outright... I have no clue what I am doing. I am a programmer by trade, so assume you're teaching someone who is a complete newb if you respond...because I am.

I'll start with what an overview of I am trying to do. I am working on a video game using the UnrealEngine; however, my levels are too large and complex for my computer to bake the lighting by itself. Luckily, UE ships with a task scheduling application that allows multiple computers to contribute to the process called "Swarm". The two challenges, however, are that first, the computers must be in the same network; second, as the Swarm agent is a C# application, they must both be Windows boxes.

What I have currently attempted is to set up a VPN using an OpenVPN image in EC2 and a t2 Windows box in EC2. I created two users for my OpenVPN box and have downloaded and connected via OpenVPN Connect from both my local machine and the Windows instance. Both boxes have successfully connected to the VPN box.

On the VPN box, I am using Layer2 as it was recommended for all Windows clients.

Neither box is having internet traffic routed through the VPN.

I am able to ping the EC2 box from my local machine by machine name. Woohoo. However, the EC2 machine does not seem to be able to reach my local machine at all. Not even when I log into my router and put my local machine out on the DMZ.

It's clear to me I really don't know what I'm doing. If there is anyone who has any idea what I'm talking about and how to get past these problems, I'd be much obliged. Even better would be someone who could help a newbie understand what he's doing wrong and baby step me through what I need to do.

I will be happy to answer any questions on what my configuration and requirements are (though I may need follow up questions like "how do I find that out?" answered first... like I said, total newbie).

And yes, I've google searched the heck out of this. I've searched for over a week and a half, actually. If this HAS been answered, then I don't even know what I should be searching for, but would love a point in the right direction.

Traffic

ThomasShirk wroteUE ships with a task scheduling application that allows multiple computers to contribute to the process called "Swarm". The two challenges, however, are that first, the computers must be in the same network; second, as the Swarm agent is a C# application, they must both be Windows boxes

You need to know the exact network requirements of Swarm ...

Windows client cannot ping other windows client

See --client-to-client in The Manual v23x

For further help please post your configs and logs.

ThomasShirk

Traffic wrote
ThomasShirk wroteUE ships with a task scheduling application that allows multiple computers to contribute to the process called "Swarm". The two challenges, however, are that first, the computers must be in the same network; second, as the Swarm agent is a C# application, they must both be Windows boxes
You need to know the exact network requirements of Swarm ...

Thanks for responding, Traffic. Sadly, what I've said here is as much about that as I can find out. I know people have been able to use VPNs (the exact solution was not mentioned) to meet that requirement; I have also seen in one place that people have successfully used Amazon EC2 clusters for these calculations but again they did not elucidate on how they pulled it off.

The most details I've been able to find is that the clients must:
1) Be able to reach eachother by host(computer) name, not just IP (shortly after posting this, I'd successfully gotten them to see eachother by IP, but not by name)
2) Be able to ping each other (again, it seems it must be by host name)
3) Be able to reach ports 8008 and 8009 on each other

Windows client cannot ping other windows client
See --client-to-client in The Manual v23x

For further help please post your configs and logs.

Thank you. I will read through this and reply if I have further questions.

Thanks again, Traffic! I was not expecting I'd have a reply so quickly!

ThomasShirk

Windows client cannot ping other windows client

See --client-to-client in The Manual v23x

For further help please post your configs and logs.[/quote]

Is it possible to set this client-to-client ability through the web admin? Or will I have to log into the server with PUTTY?

ThomasShirk

I have managed to resolve this issue on my own. The problem was with my BaseFilteringEngine service on my local machine. Because the Windows Firewall service had somehow become disassociated from the LocalService account, BFE kept on running whether the firewall was up or not, and I could not add exceptions to the local firewall.

When I stop or pause the BFE, the VPN functioned perfectly (although it seemed to be significantly slower than simply pinging the machines by IP).

Interestingly enough, in the process I discovered that Swarm does not, actually, need to be on the same network; if your machines have the requisite ports (ICMP 1, TCP 8008-8009) open then they can work just fine by IP address. The more you know and all that. So if anyone else drops by wanting to know how to set up Swarm over OpenVPN, just let them know the public IPs work just fine.