I have setup a SQL Server 2008 Express instance on a dedicated Windows 2008 Server hosted by 1and1.com. I cannot connect remotely to the server through management studio. I have taken the following steps below and am beyond any further ideas. I have researched the site and cannot figure anything else out so please forgive me if I missed something obvious, but I'm going crazy. Here's the lowdown. The SQL Server instance is running and works perfectly when working locally. In SQL Server Management Studio, I have checked the box "Allow Remote Connections to this Server" I have removed any external hardware firewall settings from the 1and1 admin panel Windows firewall on the server has been disabled, but just for kicks I added an inbound rule that allows for all connections on port 1433. In SQL Native Client configuration, TCP/IP is enabled. I also made sure the "IP1" with the server's IP address had a 0 for dynamic port, but I deleted it and added 1433 in the regular TCP Port field. I also set the "IPALL" TCP Port to 1433. In SQL Native Client configuration, SQL Server Browser is also running and I also tried adding an ALIAS in the I restarted SQL server after I set this value. Doing a "netstat -ano" on the server machine returns a TCP 0.0.0.0:1433 LISTENING UDP 0.0.0.0:1434 LISTENING I do a port scan from my local computer and it says that the port is FILTERED instead of LISTENING. I also tried to connect from Management studio on my local machine and it is throwing a connection error. Tried the following server names with SQL Server and Windows Authentication marked in the database security. ipaddress\SQLEXPRESS,1433 ipaddress\SQLEXPRESS ipaddress ipaddress,1433 tcp:ipaddress\SQLEXPRESS tcp:ipaddress\SQLEXPRESS,1433