Overview

In this article you will learn how to verify connectivity to remote services that are based on TCP (such as the BarTender Licensing Service) and check if a specific port is open.

Applicable to 

BarTender 2019 and above

Information

Starting from BarTender 2019, the system hosting the BarTender license uses default TCP port 5160. So, the BarTender clients are retrieving license information from the host system through the port selected. However, in some cases you may find that your own firewall is blocking such communication, preventing the connectivity with a remote BarTender Licensing Service during activation on a BarTender client computer.

If you've already tried to manually search your license over the network through the BarTender Licensing Wizard but your license is still not shown in the list, you may try with one of the following command-line utilities to check if the default TCP 5160 port is indeed blocked:

1. On the server itself, use netstat -na | find "5160" in order to verify if that port is active and listening.

2. From client side, just write telnet host port to see if the connection is refused, accepted, or times out. 

   • For example, we could type telnet 192.168.1.100 5160

In general:

• connection refused means that nothing is running on that port
• accepted means that something is running on that port. If this connection succeeds your command window will go blank.
• timeout means that a firewall is blocking access

Note that Telnet client application is disabled by default in Microsoft Windows 10, so if you try to use it in Command Prompt, you may get the error message ‘‘Telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file‘. 

To solve this, just enable it: Click Start, Control Panel, Programs, and then Turn Windows Features on or off. In the list, scroll down and select Telnet Client and click OK.