We Keep Coding

Create TCP Server accessible on remote networks

A project I am working on has an Android app as a front-end and a Python program that would be used as the back-end.
I want to send data from the Android app (primarily images) to the Python program, do some processing and send the result back to the Android app.
I have found numerous tutorials that suggest using the socket module in python to create the server side, but all tutorials show the server on local network only (For testing purposes I created the client side also in Python, but it would be converted to Java later on)
The server code:
from requests import get
import socket
public_ip = get('https://api.ipify.org').text
print('My public IP address is: {}'.format(public_ip))
# getting the hostname by socket.gethostname() method
hostname = socket.gethostname()
# getting the IP address using socket.gethostbyname() method
local_ip = socket.gethostbyname(hostname)
# printing the hostname and ip_address
print(f"Hostname: {hostname}")
print(f"IP Address: {local_ip}")
#
HOST = local_ip
PORT = 80 # Port to listen on (non-privileged ports are > 1023)
with socket.socket(family=socket.AF_INET, type=socket.SOCK_STREAM, proto=0) as s:
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen()
conn, addr = s.accept()
with conn:
print('Connected by', addr)
while True:
data = conn.recv(1024).decode('utf-8')
if not data:
break
conn.sendall(data.encode('utf-8'))
The client code:
import socket
HOST = '…' # I modify it to the server's public IP address, as printed from the server code
PORT = 80 # The port used by the server
with socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) as s:
with socket.create_connection((HOST, PORT)) as s:
s.sendall(b'Hello, world')
data = s.recv(1024)
print('Received', repr(data))
Using the code above, if I try using any port other than 80 I get ConnectionRefusedError: [Errno 111] Connection refused. And for port 80, I get TimeoutError: [Errno 110] Connection timed out.
In both cases, I try to connect from a device on another network.
I tried to use the ping command in Windows CMD to check the connection to the server, and I get 'connection refused message'.
I understand that the Firewall is what probably blocks the connection, but I don't know how to bypass it. I added a new rule in the Inbound Rules section (as suggested on other websites) but for no avail… The results were the same.
How can I make the connection between remote devices on different networks?
Thanks in advance ☺

In order to connect to your server using a TCP socket connection, you need to make sure your server can listen on a port on a publically available IP address.
If the External IP address is assigned to your computer directly,
and if you run the server code on that computer, then the TCP port opened by the server code should be available on the internet.
However, IP addresses are often assigned to a modem/router in home networks,
instead of assigning them to any connected device directly.
To find out if your External IP address is assigned to the computer directly you can use tools that your OS support (eg. ipconfig on windows). If you can see the IP address returned by api.ipify.org, then it means your computer is connected directly. You can change your code to connect using publically exposed IP:
HOST = public_ip
If this is successful means your computer is assigned an external address directly. Which is highly unlikely.
There are several workarounds for this problem though:
1) Configure your router to forward port
Configure your router to forward all connections to it's external TCP port, to an internal host in your network which is assigned to your computer. Please find instructions how it is done for your router.
2) Setup a remote proxy
If you don't have permission to change your router settings you can set up a remote proxy listening on the TCP port. While there is a number of ways of doing this, very popular is to set up a remote SSH tunnel, for that you need to have a server with SSH access and an external IP. Run this command:
ssh -R 80:localhost:8080 root#your-ssh-server-host
You can also use a third-party service that exposes your private host on the internet like:
Ngrok (Commercial, with free plans)
Localtunnel (Open Source, can be self-hosted)

Server implementation with python socket and port forwarding

I've been trying to implement a server-client connection, here is my code-
Server.py
import socket
server = socket.socket()
server.bind(('', 2112))
server.listen(5)
print('Server created with port 2112')
server.accept()
print('Connected')
Client.py
import socket
##Public_IP is the Public IP address of my router
client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
client.connect((Public_IP, 2112))
Both Server.py and Client.py are running on my computer(server). It works just fine when I replace Public_IP with '192.168.0.143', but when I use Public_IP, it gives the following error-
TimeoutError: [WinError 10060] A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond
Is it because I'm running both Server.py and Client.py on the same computer? Please let me know what I'm doing wrong.
Setting up port forwarding -
Public IP
Port forwarding
Private IP address of server
I followed this tutorial for setting up port forwarding.
I also tried replacing the empty string in Server.py with my private IP address-
server.bind(('192.168.0.143', 2112))
Edit: I have tried-
Running Client.py externally (on a different LAN) with firewall down on both the ends, but didn't make any difference (it gave a timeout error).
Running Client.py on the same LAN with firewall down, that seemed to work fine.
Running the Client.py on the same device also worked fine with the firewall down.

Remote connection not working. Couldn't connect to server with python socket

[WinError 10061] and [WinError 10060]. These are the errors im getting when i send a client app to my friend. Remotely it just doesn't work. Locally it works fine. Can i get a full explanation step by step please cause i couldn't find any soulution and i'm getting mad.
SERVER:
import socket as s
HOST = 'ppp.ppp.p.ppp'
PORT = 33000
server_socket = s.socket(s.AF_INET, s.SOCK_STREAM)
server_socket.bind((HOST, PORT))
server_socket.listen()
while True:
client_socket, address = server_socket.accept()
print(f'Connected {address}')
CLIENT:
import socket as s
HOST = 'ppp.ppp.p.ppp'
PORT = 33000
client_socket = s.socket(s.AF_INET, s.SOCK_STREAM)
client_socket.connect((HOST, PORT)) # here is error
PS: CLIENT GETS ERRORS NOT SERVER

welcome to SO. You and your friend are probably not on the same network. Therefore, when sending a connection request, your router (or your friends) does not know to relay the packet to the correct device in it's network. There are multiple things you need to do:
Make sure that the IP is not your local network IP but rather the IP of your router. check on wahtismyip. Use that as the ip. Note that the ip will change every so often.
Then, the difficult part. You need to tell your router (or your friends if the server is in his network) to relay the packets arriving at port 33000 to the server. This is different from device to device, try googling "Port forwarding ".
Hopefully this resolves your issues.

Python on GCE: connection failed because connected host has failed to respond

I've been working on a project that requires a bit of networking between a server (hosted on GCE) and multiple clients. I created a Compute Engine Instance to run a Python script as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OL7fu2R4M8.
Here is my server-side script:
server = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname()) # 10.128.X.XXX which is the Internal IP
print(server)
port = 5555
clients = 0
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((server, port))
s.listen(2)
print("Waiting for connection...")
while True:
conn, addr = s.accept()
print("Connected to: ", addr)
conn.send(str.encode(f"{clients}"))
clients += 1
and here is my client side-script:
class Network:
def __init__(self):
self.client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
self.server = "10.128.0.2"
self.port = 5555
self.addr = (self.server, self.port)
self.id = int(self.connect())
def connect(self):
self.client.connect(self.addr)
return self.client.recv(2048).decode()
network = Network()
print(f"Connected as client {network.id}")
I know this script works because I have tested it with my computer being the server and 1 client, and another computer being the 2nd client. But when I use the GCE as the server, I get this error in the client script:
TimeoutError: [WinError 10060] A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond
Could this be because I am using the internal IP address and not the external?
After this, I tried changing the firewall settings (added 'python-socket') of the GCE and this is what they look like:
But the error still persists...
As answered by W_B, I tried to run these commands on my VM and got the following outputs:

From your description it's evident it's the connection problem.
First of all you have to check if the firewall rule you created is still there. If it's "too broad" and allows for very wide access then it might be removed automatically even without you knowing it. It's on you'r screenshot but check it again just to be sure.
If it's there select the protocol you're goint to be using (I assume it's TCP) - some protocols are always blocked by default by GCP (you can't change this) so creating a rule with "any protocol" allowed is risky. Also - put one or two target IP's (not all inside this VPC) - this is not a must but improves security of your network.
Second - make sure port 5555 you're trying to connect to is accessible from other computers. You can scan the target host with nmap -p 5554 put.server.ip.here
You can scan it from the Internet or other VM's in the same VPC network.
You should get something like this:
root#localhost:~$ nmap -p 443 192.168.1.6
Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-06-25 17:12 UTC
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.6
Host is up (0.00091s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
443/tcp open https
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.04 seconds
If you see 5555/tcp filtered freeciv this means that something blocks the port.
Run nmap on the server (I assume you run some version of Linux) and if you don't want to install any non-essencial software you can use sudo netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN to get a list of open ports (5555 should be on the list).
Also make sure firewall on your server doesn't block this port. You can use iptables for that.

Python: Connect using sockets via external IP

Today, I have made my very first sockets program - I made a client and a server that message each other (kind of like a chat) using sockets. When using the internal IP as 'host', The connection is established, otherwise using the external IP, no connection is established.
Edit 1:
#Client
s = socket.socket()
host = '123.123.123.123'
port = 9999
s.connect((host, port))
#Server
host = ''
port = 9999
s = socket.socket()
s.bind((host, port))
s.listen(5)
connection, address = s.accept()
How will this work properly with, for example, a laptop? Since your IP changes each time you switch Wifi, how would I be able to create a program that would permanently work with this specific laptop?
I understand that I have to port-forward the specific port to a specific internal machine such as 192.168.0.5. but what if I'm using a laptop and I don't have access to the WIFI router. I wouldn't have access to every router a laptop uses.
I want the code to be permanently compatible.

Use DynDNS.com or NoIP.com portal. You install program on laptop which check your IP frequencly and sends current IP to portal which assigns this IP to your address like "my_laptop.noip.com". Then people can access your laptop using "my_laptop.noip.com" instead of IP address.
You always assign socket to IP of local network card (NIC) like WiFi. You can't assing to external IP. You have to config your router so requests to external IP:port will be send to your local IP:port. Of course Internet Provider routers can block your ports and it will not work.