Troubleshooting NetSupport Manager Gateway Client connections
This article applies to NetSupport Manager version 12.80 and below. To see steps on how to use this on version 14.00 and above, click here.
If your NetSupport Manager Clients are failing to connect to the Gateway (NetSupport Connectivity Server) after installation, there are several steps you can take to troubleshoot these issues.
The same steps can be followed for both scenarios where the Gateway is either hosted internally on the same local network as the Client machines or when using the Gateway to allow external Clients on remote networks to connect. The example in this article uses a public-facing Gateway.
Note: It’s assumed that you have already configured the Gateway connection details in the Client configuration.
Troubleshooting the Gateway
To see which Clients are currently connected to the Gateway, right click the Gateway Server icon in the system tray and select Open.
The NetSupport Connectivity Server Console appears and the currently connected Clients will be listed in the Clients tab.
If Clients are not connecting to the Gateway and they should be, there are several things that you can check:
- Gateway log file
The Gateway Server keeps a log file of all the Client connections that have been made to the Gateway. The Gateway log file is called GW00x.log and is stored in the following location on the server machine C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesNSLConnectivity Server. When the log file reaches a certain size, a new log file will be created – ensure you open the latest file.
If the Client has been able to connect to the Gateway, but the Gateway has rejected the connection for any reason, it will be logged in this file against the Client PC name. If there is no mention of the Client PC name, this indicates that the Client has not connected to the server.
- Gateway test page
There is a Gateway test page within the software which can be used to confirm whether a machine can communicate with the Gateway. To test this, on the Client machine that is not connecting to the Gateway, open a web browser and go to the following address:
http://8.8.8.8:443/testpage.htm
Note: The “8.8.8.8:443” section of the above URL is an example and you need to change this to match the IP address/hostname and port that your Gateway Server has been configured to listen on.
If the connection is successful, the following page appears:
If you are not able to reach the URL above from the Client machine, this indicates that the machine is having trouble communicating with the server on the specified address/port.
3.PowerShell Test-NetConnection test
If you can not reach the test page above, you can perform a PowerShell Test-NetConnection test to the Gateway Server machine on the port that you have configured the server to listen on. This will confirm whether the Client machine can talk to the server on this port.
From the Client machine open PowerShell and enter Test-NetConnection -ComputerName followed by the IP address of the Gateway machine then -Port and then the port that the Gateway is listening on.
For example, Test-NetConnection -ComputerName 10.20.0.128 -Port 443
The above command is an example and you need to change the IP address and port to match your Gateway Server.
If a connection is successful, it will show “TCPTestSuceeded: True”
If you are not able to receive a response on the Test-NetConnection test, this indicates that there could be something blocking the port on the Gateway Server. If you can receive a Test-NetConnection True response, but you are unable to reach the gateway test page, this could indicate that another third-party program is using the specified port.
If you are still experiencing issues with the Gateway connections after reviewing the above steps, please contact our Technical Support team.