the short version: I need to explicitly set the port for my linked server config to use only port 1433, and can't figure out how to do that. Has anyone done this before?
the long version: I have two data servers on different subnets (xx.ab.cd.59 and xx.ef.gh.59)hosted by a third party and several client machines on each subnet that need to connect to both data servers. I set these up months ago and they all worked. last month I checked and they are no longer connecting in one direction only: a client on xx.ab.cd.60 can reach both data servers, but the client on xx.ef.gh.60 can reach the data server xx.ef.gh.59, but not xx.ab.cd.59. After lengthy troubleshooting we have determined that the problem is the "dynamic port assignment" step. If I explicitly set the client xx.ef.gh.60 to connect on port 1433 then it works just fine. When I use the default settings I see communication on UDP 1434 and no firewall blocking the communication, but the data server just doesn't seem to respond. The third-party hosts have been cooperative, but we are left pointing fingers at each other. I can't see a difference in configuration on the two data servers, and if the server responds one way to local clients and a different way to clients on the next subnet then that looks like a network issue to me.
Now the client computers are all using just DSN to connect, and in the DSN setup I can turn off the dynamic ports and set it to run on port 1433 only. This gets me through half the problem. The two data servers also need to communicate to each other and this is accomplished via linked servers. Once again, this was working fine when originally set up, but now this communication works in only one direction. I can't find a way to set the linked servers to communicate over port 1433 only, and this appears to be the hang-up here. so, how can I set my linked server to run over port 1433 explicitly?
Jared