Windows – Can’t telnet from windows machine to OS X laptop on same network

mac-osxnetworkingtelnetwindows

I'm trying to telnet from my windows box into a service running on a known-available port on a mac laptop, but the connection is getting refused.

  • I can telnet into the service locally.
  • Firewalls are set to pass-through on both ends.
  • Wiresharking the line shows that the SYN gets responded to with a RST, ACK. No connection is established.

What might be going on here? (Thanks in advance!)

Best Answer

localhost is the hostname for the loopback address - that will be the resolved hostname for both 127.0.0.1 and ::1. If a service is bound to one of these addresses, it will only be available to attempts to connect locally to the loopback address.

A service that needs to listen for connections over the network should listen on a non-loopback address; you can manually specify the addresses to listen on, or go with the "easy route" of binding to 0.0.0.0 (for IPv6, ::) to listen on all addresses (including the loopback).

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