2

I'm having a really bizarre problem with my home internet, specifically when I try to play flash games. The games load fine, but for some reason they disrupt the internet connection of every computer on my home network, specifically over port 80. All applications using other ports continue to function normally. Often I have to resort to rebooting the router in order to get port 80 working again.

As a web developer myself, I'm ashamed to admit I'm kind of stumped over this one. Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this behavior?

EDIT: Well, now I'm even more ashamed... Usavich rightly pointed out that port 80 is simply a destination port, not an outgoing/incoming port on my end. Not sure what I was thinking. Still, the pattern remains: normal web browser requests fail, while other persistent connections (iChat, Gmail) continue to function. I'm totally perplexed here.

Also I have reports that it's happening even without Flash being involved. The internet simply drops until the router is restarted.

EDIT 2: Just saw this question:

What is causing my wireless router to stop routing HTTP (port 80) connections?

Seems pretty similar to my problem. I'm thinking this might just be a router flaw (mine is a Netgear WNR2000v3).

3
  • I would take this to an Adobe forum. There's a website that lets you adjust your local Flash settings - I looked at this, and the only remote possibility I could find is "Peer Assisted Networking" - perhaps try setting this to "Always Deny". Here's the site: macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/…
    – Dave
    Dec 26, 2011 at 12:30
  • You mean your web server on port 80 stops functioning?
    – Wei Shi
    Dec 28, 2011 at 9:24
  • Nope, I mean I'm unable to access the Internet over port 80. In other words, if I try to go to google.com, I will get no response. However, iChat and Gmail will continue functioning because they operate over alternate ports (not port 80).
    – Matt D
    Dec 29, 2011 at 20:23

1 Answer 1

0

When you access a web page, your browser establishes a connection with port 80 on THEIR side and a random port >1024 on YOUR side. So the flash game isn't blocking your port 80.

If you have a web server running and people can't access your server after running the flash game, then it's blocking your port 80.

2
  • Well, that may be true, but what could possibly be causing outgoing port 80 connections to fail but other connections to remain open? Could it be that consistent connections are fine but new requests fail?
    – Matt D
    Dec 30, 2011 at 3:12
  • Maybe it's due to MTU setting. Check your router and set it to a more conservative value(depending on your connection type). This is just a shot in the dark, but I once had weird problem with wrong MTU.
    – Wei Shi
    Dec 30, 2011 at 10:02

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .