ERROR connecting: Connection refused - c

Question

IMPORTANT EDIT: After not changing anything it randomly started working. I have no idea why but thanks for all the help anyway!
I'm trying to learn how to create a client and a server that can interact with each other using C. I've done some research and followed a tutorial and I feel like I have a decent understanding of how it all works, but when I tried running the example the client cannot connect to the server.
Here is the client code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <netdb.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int sockfd, portno, n;
struct sockaddr_in serv_addr;
struct hostent *server;
char buffer[256];
if (argc <3) {
fprintf(stderr,"usage %s hostname port\n", argv[0]);
exit(0);
}
portno = atoi(argv[2]);
printf("PORT NUMBER: %d\n", portno);
/* Create a socket point */
sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if (sockfd < 0)
{
perror("ERROR opening socket");
exit(1);
}
server = gethostbyname(argv[1]);
if (server == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr,"ERROR, no such host\n");
exit(0);
}
bzero((char *) &serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr));
serv_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
bcopy((char *)server->h_addr, (char *)&serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr, server->h_length);
serv_addr.sin_port = htons(portno);
/* Now connect to the server */
if (connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr*)&serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr)) < 0)
{
perror("ERROR connecting");
exit(1);
}
return 0;
}
And here is the server code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <netdb.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <string.h>
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
int sockfd, newsockfd, portno, clilen;
char buffer[256];
struct sockaddr_in serv_addr, cli_addr;
int n;
/* First call to socket() function */
sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if (sockfd < 0) {
perror("ERROR opening socket");
exit(1);
}
printf("Successfully opened socket\n");
bzero((char *) &serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr));
portno = 5771;
serv_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;
serv_addr.sin_port = htons(portno);
/* Now bind the host address using bind() call.*/
if (bind(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *) &serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr)) < 0) {
perror("ERROR on binding");
exit(1);
}
printf("Successfully bound socket\n");
/* Now start listening for the clients, here process will
* go in sleep mode and will wait for the incoming connection
*/
printf("Commence listening\n");
listen(sockfd,50);
clilen = sizeof(cli_addr);
/* Accept actual connection from the client */
newsockfd = accept(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&cli_addr, &clilen);
if (newsockfd < 0) {
perror("ERROR on accept");
exit(1);
}
printf("CONNECTED.\n");
return 0;
}
The output from the server is the following:
Successfully opened socket
Successfully bound socket
Commence Listening
I read some other questions asked here related to the connection refused error and they said that the most likely cause of the error was that the port wasn't open. But if my server is making it all the way to the listening step, shouldn't that mean that the port is in fact open? I don't think it has to do with passing in the wrong IP address to the client because I've tried passing in an incorrect IP address and it errors well before the connection refused.
Does anyone have any insight as to why I'm receiving this error?