Frequent Visitor
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9 Messages
Xfinity may be blocking IRC connection attempt?
i'm not sure where to go from here
Yesterday (tuesday) I connected to synIRC using mIRC like I've done for years. I'm getting randomly disconnected. Xfinity also starts sending me vague messages about "threats" being blocked.
I upgrade my Windows 10 to version 1903, and now suddenly I cannot connect to synIRC at all. All I get are "Connection timed out" as a message.
This only affects the synIRC network; I can connect to pretty much any other IRC network using a client.
I tried HexChat and even Microsoft Comic Chat and they can connect to any server except synIRC.
However, I can still connect to synIRC via web clients.
I tried to connect to one specific synIRC server and it managed to connect for several seconds before disconnecting and going back to being unable to connect.
I tried connecting while temporarily disabling my firewall and while both disabling and re-enabling my Windows Defender.
I'm not sure where to even begin here. Is Comcast suddenly blocking ports or IP addresses associated with just one IRC server? Or is this not Comcast-related?
Responses
EG
Expert
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87.1K Messages
1 y ago
Can you browse to any site ? lf not, then that is a lot larger of a problem than what you first posted. Is the "Online" indicator light on the modem lit steadily ?
Does it indicate that you are in a general outage here ?;
https://www.xfinity.com/support/status
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EG
Expert
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87.1K Messages
1 y ago
You could try posting the output of a traceroute to the SynIRC server that you connect to to see if it reveals where the blockage may be:
https://www.synirc.net/servers
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ScipioAfricanus
Frequent Visitor
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9 Messages
1 y ago
I'm actually not able to tracert or ping anything. I get General Failure for any address
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ScipioAfricanus
Frequent Visitor
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9 Messages
1 y ago
I'm not having any other problems. I can go online and I can even access synIRC on my android device over WiFi. There's no outages reported near me. Yet for some reason I can't connect on my main computer with any client, and now apparently I cannot ping or trace route.
I've restarted my router multiple times today. After each restart, my IRC client was able to successfully connect to synIRC, but after a few minutes it would disconnect and not reconnect.
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ScipioAfricanus
Frequent Visitor
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9 Messages
1 y ago
I reset Norton Security Suite's firewall and now I can ping again as well as adjust program control.
But this hasn't resolved my original issue with being unable to connect via mIRC
EDIT: I have noticed, I am unable to ping any of synIRC's servers via their IPv4 address. However, I am able to ping them by their network names (such as "avarice.ny.us.synirc.net") and the results are returned in IPv6
When I turn on a VPN, I am able to connect via mIRC, AND I am able to ping the IPv4 addresses. As well, pinging them by their network names returns their IPv4 addresses, not their IPv6 Addresses
EDIT EDIT: I am able to successfully connect via mIRC if I use the command specifically to connect to the server via IPv6, ie "/server -6 irc.synirc.net"
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aledbet33
New Poster
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2 Messages
1 y ago
@ScipioAfricanus I have been having the exact same problem as you, and forcing it to connect via IPv6 like you suggested is the only thing that's been able to fix it. At least it's some solution. Please, keep me in the loop if you figure out anything else.
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ScipioAfricanus
Frequent Visitor
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9 Messages
1 y ago
it looks to me to be solely related to Windows 10's new version 1903 probably. I had accidentally messed up my Norton firewall and it was blocking pings and traceroutes with IPv4, but I could still ping and trace with IPv6. I reset Norton firewall and everything's working again.
I still cannot connect normally except for using the command "/server -6 irc.synirc.net"
It only affects synIRC which is why I am confused.
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aledbet33
New Poster
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2 Messages
1 y ago
Actually, it seems to be attached to some sort of new xfinity security suite they have on xFi or whatever it's called. It apparently detects some port usage as a threat. My roommate was messing with it earlier, and suddenly all my IRC problems dried up. I'll ask what specifically was done to fix it.
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