The default configs have been changed to have the same listen-ip value you used to fix it.  This has to do with the way newer multi stack operating systems handle localhost.

See https://freeswitch.org/jira/browse/FS-7638 for more details on the issue and how it was addressed.

On Nov 2, 2015, at 9:17 AM, n43w79 <n43w79@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10/22/2015 19:00, David Wylie wrote:
On a new installation of FS I could not connect to the running server with fs_cli until I added  "-H localhost".
After that, I no longer needed to add the -H localhost bit to connect on any future attempts.

See this for a workaround: https://freeswitch.org/jira/browse/FS-7358
My new install version FreeSWITCH (Version 1.4.23 git 02dde63 2015-10-29 17:18:24Z 64bit) has the same issue.
Fixed with vi autoload_configs/event_socket.conf.xml by changing:
   <param name="listen-ip" value="::"/>

$ netstat -npl | grep 8021
tcp6 0 0 :::8021 :::* LISTEN 2109/freeswitch