Node.js connect only works on localhost

Question

I've written a small Node.js app, using connect, that serves up a web page, then sends it regular updates. It also accepts and logs user observations to a disk file.

It works fine as long as I am on localhost, but I can't get other computers on the same intranet to see it. I am using port 3000, but changing to port 8080 or 80 didn't help.

Here is the code I am using to set up the connection:

var io = require('socket.io'),
  connect = require('connect');

var app = connect().use(connect.static('public')).listen(3000);
var chat_room = io.listen(app);

As stated above, I've tried changing the port number to 8080 or to 80, and didn't see any difference, so I don't think that it is a firewall problem (but I could be wrong). I've also thought about, after reading similar questions dealing with HTTP, to add 0.0.0.0 to the listen() method but it doesn't seem that listen() takes an IP mask parameter.

Answer 1

Most probably your server socket is bound to the loopback IP address 127.0.0.1 instead of the "all IP addresses" symbolic IP 0.0.0.0 (note this is NOT a netmask). To confirm this, run sudo netstat -ntlp (If you are on linux) or netstat -an -f inet -p tcp | grep LISTEN (OSX) and check which IP your process is bound to (look for the line with ":3000"). If you see "127.0.0.1", that's the problem. Fix it by passing "0.0.0.0" to the listen call:

var app = connect().use(connect.static('public')).listen(3000, "0.0.0.0");

Answer 2

To gain access for other users to your local machine, i usually use ngrok. Ngrok exposes your localhost to the web, and has an NPM wrapper that is simple to install and start:

$ npm install ngrok -g
$ ngrok http 3000

See this example usage:

In the above example, the locally running instance of sails at: localhost:3000 is now available on the Internet served at: http://69f8f0ee.ngrok.io or https://69f8f0ee.ngrok.io

Answer 3

Binding to 0.0.0.0 is half the battle. There is an ip firewall (different from the one in system preferences) that blocks TCP ports. Hence port must be unblocked there as well by doing:

sudo ipfw add <PORT NUMBER> allow tcp from any to any

Answer 4

On your app, makes it reachable from any device in the network:

app.listen(3000, "0.0.0.0");

For NodeJS in Azure, GCP & AWS

For Azure vm deployed in resource manager, check your virtual network security group and open ports or port ranges to make it reachable, otherwise in your cloud endpoints if vm is deployed in old version of azure.

Just look for equivalent of it for GCP and AWS