Socket Exception: Connection Actively refused

Question

Currently making a vb.net program to communicate a string between two computers. My test bed is a Windows 8 machine connecting to a windows 7 VM. However, despite numerous measures, I still continue getting this error on the development machine side. Here is what I've done/enabled so far.

• Running main program within debugger in visual studio, connecting to deployed program in test VM
• Port 61337. IP addresses are unique to each machine.
• Bridged connection
• Firewall is down in Test VM
• Firewall Connection Rule in Development machine allows any tcp connection across any endpoint across any port
• Netgear router has port forwarding enabled across the above port to the development machine.

I've been racking my brain and can't seem to think of anything else I haven't tried at this point.

Is there anything I'm missing? I suspect it's something really obvious.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Edit: Here is how I've configured the block for the host machine(the vm in this scenario). It was taken from someone's c# version from a blog.

Dim LocalHostName As String = Dns.GetHostName()
Dim LocalHostIPEntry As IPHostEntry = Dns.GetHostEntry(LocalHostName)
Dim LocalHostIP As IPAddress = LocalHostIPEntry.AddressList(0)
Dim LocalIPEndPointAnyIP As IPEndPoint = New IPEndPoint(LocalHostIP, _Port)

Answer 1

You are most likely binding to and listening on a loopback interface. Use IPAddress.Any instead of LocalHostIP to accept connections on any interface.