The essential step to completing the Proxidize server installation is connecting your server to the internet.
Connecting the server to your router via an ethernet cable is sufficient to achieve connectivity to the internet. However, things only sometimes go as smoothly, and the server would refuse to get internet connectivity just by connecting it to a router.
The reasons for this might be:
The router is not responding to the Proxidize server requests.
Faulty cables or ports.
Faulty network interface.
A firewall is blocking the traffic.
In this article, we will go through the above reasons and basic troubleshooting steps that you can do to isolate the issue and fix it yourself.
The router is not responding to the Proxidize server requests.
By default, the communication between the server and the router is done via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). This communication is started the second the server is powered up and connected to the router.
The server sends a DHCP request asking for an IP address from the DHCP server (your router). If there were no communication errors, the router should respond with a DHCP offer that includes an IP address of the IP pool configured on the router, and there you go, you're connected to the internet.
In some cases, the router fails to respond to the requests due to the following:The router is not configured to act as a DHCP server.
Some router models are not configured as DHCP servers by default. To fix this issue, you need to contact your system administrator or network engineer to complete the DHCP configuration for the communication to flow.The router port is faulty.
To verify if the port is faulty, connect the ethernet cable from the same router port to another device in your network and test if it gets an IP address. If that does not work, you could check the same ethernet cable in a different port on the router and to the Proxidize server or any other device. If that worked, the port is likely faulty (but this is not always true) - a router reboot might also help.The router might be dropping the DHCP requests due to internal configurations on the router.
We have seen cases where some internal processes/services in the router are stuck, and a router reboot is required to restart these and get them back to work as intended.The Proxidize server is not connected to the router directly. An intermediate network device is present in the network.
If this is the case, the intermediate device should be configured to relay DHCP requests between the server and the router since every network device will drop these requests by default. Hence, we highly recommend connecting the server to a router directly.
Faulty cables or ports.
Even though this is highly unlikely, you might still need to try different router ports or ethernet cables to isolate this part.Faulty network interface.
This cause is very rare, and it requires the intervention of the Proxidize technical support team to confirm if the server's network interface is faulty. In this case, your server will be replaced for free if it is under warranty. Otherwise, you will need to acquire a new server.A firewall is blocking the traffic.
In this case, your server most likely has gotten a new IP address, but packets destined for the Internet or returned from the Internet back to your server are being dropped at the firewall level.
You can bypass your firewall to isolate the issue and see if connectivity is restored. If so, consider changing your access rules or security parameters configured on the firewall to permit these packets.
If none of the above worked, or you need more technical experience to go through these steps, don't hesitate to contact our technical support team to guide you or help solve the issue if it falls under our support scope.
The support team is available via the live chat on the website or within your Proxidize dashboard if you complete the installation.