Cannot connect to CVS server

[Andrew Golebiowski]

This has, most likely, been already discussed more than ones but I cannot
find anything that would offer me a hint.

Here is the problem. When I try to log in from WinCVS client to the server
it asks for the password and after it is entered responds with the
following:

"cvs [login aborted]: connect to [IP-address]:2401 failed: No connection
could be made because the target machine actively refused it."

The setup is as follows:

(1) CVS server is a RedHat 9 machine, internal address 192.168.2.27
(2) CVS client is a WinCVS on WIndows 2000, internal address 192.168.2.30
(3) router with [IP-address] is set up to let the traffic on port 2401
through to 192.168.2.27 the same port number
(4) login and password are valid user/password on the Linux box
(5) authentication is set to pserver
(6) CVS server is listening to port 2401, result of grep in /etc is shown
below

/etc/services:cvspserver     2401/tcp                        # CVS
client/server operations
/etc/services:cvspserver     2401/udp                       # CVS
client/server operations

I tried several other options like "Connect using proxy server" or using
internal IP address rather than external but nothing works.

What am I missing? Can someone help?

Andrew