Application Layer Gateway Service

erlendhg

Yesterday, I experienced something very strange.
I had installed an automatically windows update, and restarted my computer. After restarting, when I wanted to log on to the Frihost FTP server to upload a PHP script I was testing, I couldn't connect somehow.

I thought the server might be down, so I waited a while. Then I decided to try to upload it to my personal homepage, but neither there I was able to log on. I tried to connect to some other public ftp areas. Nothing worked.

I then tried to use Internet Explorer to go to the Frihost FTP server, and it found the server, but wouldn't allow me to connect. I tried to shut down the firewall, and then, suddenly I was able to connect...

I went to Microsoft´s site to search for ftp vs firewall problem, and found out that to connect to a ftp server, a service called "Application Layer Gateway Service" (alg.exe) must be started. Strangely enough, ALG was already started, but I restarted it after all.

Then everything worked just fine.

Have anyone of you experienced something like this?

orno

nope never heard of anything like that before but do u know which update it was which caused the problem? maybe digging into the windows KB will give some info on the problem and its solution

ChrisCh

I've had a problem like this when trying to use FTP from one of my networked computers... It wouldn't let me go into anything FTP, so I went and checked on the server and the firewall was blocking Application Layer Gateway Service from using the internet. I just had to change the server firewall to allow alg.exe to access the internet and act as a server.

Problem solved for me Smile

travnik7

I had a similar problem. I always used the ftp client integrated in Total Commander and it worked well for me. But then when I changed my web host, the ftp client suddenly couldn't connect anymore. I could stil connect to some ftp sites, but amazingly not to all of them. After 2 or 3 frustrating days messing with my firewall and installing several ftp clients I remembered that I was running peerguardian in the background.
Closing peerguardian worked for me.
Now everytime I want to upload something to my web host I close peerguardian.