Socket error “IP address not valid in its context” - Python

Question

I'm using Python 2.6 and Windows Server 2008.

The server has two IP addresses 1 internal, 1 external.

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I need Python to use the external IP address, but while doing so I get this:

socket.error: [Error 10049] The requested address is not valid in its context

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To be more precise I'm using Django's runserver command for who is familiar with it

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Edit:

ipconfig only brings up the internal IP address, while all services I have running are using the external IP without any problems!

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Any ideas?

Answer 1

That's an error Windows gives when you're trying to bind to an address on the local machine that's not assigned to any of the adapters on the machine. If ipconfig doesn't show it, you can't bind to it.

If the external address is on a router that is NAT'ing requests from it to the server's internal address, you can't bind to it because it's on a different machine. This is probably the case. You might want to bind to socket.INADDR_ANY (or its Django equivalent). This will bind to all addresses that are on the machine right now.

Also note that if the external address is NAT'ed to your internal one, binding to the internal one should be enough.