Came home from college and suddenly cannot connect to third party VS Server. Any tips?

[TheBlessedKettle]

I run a modded server off BisectHosting, its worked well so far and we've had no issues at all. I play with a small group of only a few other people, and none of them have had this issue before/ever. I came home from college (only an hour away from me) and set up my computer, logged on, and when I went to connect to the server I got this:

"A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connect failed because connected host has failed to respond."

I initially thought it was my antivirus software, Norton (yes, I know Norton sucks, my family has a subscription and I was given it for free, so I figured I'd just use it anyway), as I have had issues with smaller "unknown" games in the past, but VS was working fine earlier today on campus just fine. I tried to reconfigure my firewall, and to some extent I did allow the game more "access" but I still can't connect to the server. I read online on the wiki (and in some other peoples personal issues with connecting to servers) that it was port forwarding, so I set up a rule in my firewall to allow port 42420 (as suggested) on both UDP and TCP separately, as well as setting "upnp = true" on the server. This also did not fix the issue. I don't know what to do at this point, I've already restarted my PC and restarted the server multiple times, but I cannot figure out whats wrong. Any tips?

-edit

Some more information: I run WIndows 10 on my PC. I originally bought this server before I went to college, and had a group of pals who I played with on this server until I left for college, at which point we stopped playing. When I made it to college, I ended up finding some other friends of mine who were interested in VS and wanted to play; so I offered the server, so we could play together and have fun. We have been playing for around a month and a half now, and the server never threw an error or caused an issue when it came to connecting until I came back home (today) for break, back to the original location where I used the same server. Now, I can't connect at all. I get the same error every single time.

Edited March 13 by TheBlessedKettle
more information

[DoctorSnakes]

31 minutes ago, TheBlessedKettle said:

I initially thought it was my antivirus software, Norton (yes, I know Norton sucks, my family has a subscription and I was given it for free, so I figured I'd just use it anyway)

I just want to say that there is no reason to use any antivirus on Windows besides the included Windows Defender. Anything else is just bloat at best. Just use that instead, the free subscription stuff is just a trick to make you want to use it.

As for your problem, I'm pretty sure you don't need any port forwarding. That's only needed if you are hosting your server from your own network, but you're using an external service for that. So my first thought is that there is still something in your firewall that blocks the connection. I don't use Windows that often, so I don't know if you can do this, but if I were you I'd try to just disable the firewall completely (or temporarily remove all the filters or whatever it calls it) and then try to connect to the server. If you still can't connect, then you have excluded the possibility of the firewall being a problem. (Just remember to turn it back on after!)

Edited March 12 by DoctorSnakes

[TheBlessedKettle]

19 minutes ago, DoctorSnakes said:

As for your problem, I'm pretty sure you don't need any port forwarding. That's only needed if you are hosting your server from your own network, but you're using an external service for that. So my first thought is that there is still something in your firewall that blocks the connection. I don't use Windows that often, so I don't know if you can do this, but if I were you I'd try to just disable the firewall completely (or temporarily remove all the filters or whatever it calls it) and then try to connect to the server. 

Hello, thanks for letting me know about the port forwarding thing. Yes, I can disable my firewall-- in fact, I just did in an attempt to follow your advice. I am however, still met by the same message, and still unable to connect. Thanks for the advice, though.

[Alison at BisectHosting]

Heya @TheBlessedKettle

Give the BisectHosting support team a shout  they can set you up with instructions on running an MTR, have a look at your panel, and help pinpoint where the connection issue is taking place, and if need be, get your server set up on a different node. They're staffed 24 hours a day and usually take just a few minutes to respond. 

https://help.bisecthosting.com/hc/

^ You can get in touch with them there. Hope this helps get you back into your world soon!

[TheBlessedKettle]

Hello any interested. I found the issue myself; it was not BisectHosting, it was not some strange port forwarding issue, it was none of the things I thought it was. Instead, it was my ISP blocking my connection (still not sure why) but I solved the issue with Norton. They thankfully have a built in VPN so I switched it on, set it to the US, and the problem was solved. I don't know how I would "fix" it completely but since I am going back to college in just a couple days I'm not too worried about it. Oh well