Troubleshooting a connectivity problem

If there is a connectivity problem between the Controller and a load generator machine, check the following:

1. Make sure that you can ping the Controller and host machine bidirectionally.

   Make sure that TCP/IP connectivity is functional on the Controller and Vuser machines. Use a ping utility or type ping <host_server_name> from the DOS command line to verify communication with a remote machine. Make sure that the remote load generator and Controller machines can ping each other by IP addresses and machine names.

   If the ping does not respond, or fails with a timeout, then the machine name is not recognized. To solve this problem, edit the hosts file, located in the WINNT\system32\drivers\etc directory. Open the hosts file in a word editor, and add a line with both the IP address, and machine name of the Controller machine at the end of the file. For example:
   111.111.111.111 MI_Controller
   
   Repeat these steps for all the hosts machines. For the Controller machine, repeat these steps, but add the IP and machine name of the hosts machines.

2. Make sure that the LoadRunner Agent process is running on the remote host machine.

   On the host machine, start the Agent process:

   In Windows Explorer, browse to the <LoadRunner Professional root>\launch_service\bin directory, and launch magentproc.exe.

3. Make sure Controller and Host are connected to the network.

   In some networks, the Microsoft Loopback IP address 10.10.10.10 is used when a computer is not connected to the network. As a result, Controller will not be able to detect the host machine. Stop the Loopback service, connect to the network, and make sure that the machine has a valid IP address.

4. Check if you are using multiple network cards (NICs).
   
   Remove extra NICs, or use the "primary" interface (Network and Dial-Up Connections > Advanced > Advanced Settings > Adapters and Bindings) when connecting with Controller.

Multiple NICs on a machine can cause connectivity problems between Controller and load generators, since the communication may not always be tagged with the correct interface. If a message from the Controller is sent from one NIC to a host machine, but that host knows the Controller by another, that message will be considered to have come from a different Controller, and will be ignored. Likewise, a messages sent from a host machine on an NIC unknown to the Controller, will also be ignored.