Handshake for peer 1 ... did not complete after 5 seconds, retrying

[debrucer]

I am getting the following error when in my Windows 10/11 peer interface:

[TUN] [wg1] Handshake for peer 1 (172.17.1.204:51820) did not complete after 5 seconds, retrying (try 6)

I can get rid of the error by creating a network bridge, connecting my interface to a NIC in my laptop. The message goes away; but if you follow the ipconfig output, the interface no longer has the address used for the tunnel, or the destinations. The negative message is gone; but still no handshake.

Is my client interface supposed to have internet or not? After doing tracert a few dozen times, it appears that it should not. (This is not to say that my laptop itself doesn't have internet, just the WG interface does not).

The second attachment has my remote server (in black) and my local client (laptop) in blue. These are the definitions with client connected and throwing the error messages.

When you add the bridge, in addition to the change mentioned (missing IPs) the definition on the server changes to just include the interface (clients are gone from the server).

The most frequent answer that I see is a post where the person changes the file name from wg1 to wg0. This may have been "a" reason. It is not "the" reason.

[debrucer]

It's always the keys, isn't it?

Problem solved. I'm closer to understanding why it wasn't working, perhaps it was a number of things; but clearly, I was not doing things correctly. It's still not where I want it to be; but, it's closer today than yesterday.