Another day, another port forward problem

[doomczar]

Been trying to figure this out for hours. Basically, new modem/router combo. Actiontec V1000H. Forwarding ports 8080, 4040, and 80 to my computer's IP address. I can access my library on my LAN, but not externally. I tried switching from ports 80 to 8080 and back to no avail. Any insight?

[BKKKPewsey]

The rules that you have set up in router, are they inbound or outgoing rules?
Don't forget you need both.

[ytechie]

I think the problem is that the remote ports are set to the same ports as the local port. When you access a website, your computer doesn't use its port 80 as the source port. Port 80 is the destination port, and the computer usually assigns a source port from a pool.

To see this in action on a Microsoft Windows computer, browse to a website, go to command prompt and type "netstat" and you will see the port numbers.

So in summary, I think that your port forwarding rules currently allow traffic from port 80 to port 80. And since the remote computer's port is not going to be 80, it doesn't match the rule.

Hope this helps!

[GJ51]

I've got a few observations that may or may not help.


- It looks like your router's address is set at 192.168.1.254. That may be correct and it may be how your router is set up, but it is very unusual. Most routers would use 192.168.1.1 or 129.168.1.0 or 192.168.0.1 as the base address. This is the first time I've seen the router access page at the upper end of the address range. I've used routers that would not access any addresses below the base address of the router. Consult your manual to see if this might cause problems.

- Don't try to fwd multiple addresses. Keep it simple. 8080 has always worked on every setup I have helped others with. Unless it is already in use by another application, it will work. Remove the unneeded 80 and 4040 forward information, it only confuses the issue.

- Open the Subsonic Control Panel settings tab and enter 8080 so that SS is listening for the request from the router.

- Once you've got this all cleared up it should only be a matter of getting the forwarding settings entered properly in the router so that requests for 8080 are sent from the router to 192.168.1.50. Router forwarding entries are notoriously confusing and there are no rational standards. Every mfgr. uses their own idea of what they think makes sense and they also use different setups in different models. I've had Actiontec routers and they never looked like what you have. That said you have to find the right combo to get it working. First try entering 8080/8080 TCP on the left side ONLY and leave the entry for the remote ports blank as they are optional and may be the problem.

[doomczar]

Thanks for the responses!

I don't see anywhere on the router settings for outgoing or ingoing rules. Only the Port Forwarding page that I posted the screenshot of. Furthermore, I did as GJ51 suggested (remove current rules, add one for just 8080 after setting subsonic to 8080), and it automatically filled in the "optional" remote ports to match the ones that I had set for the LAN port.

What is the highest port an incoming connection would use? I could try setting the remote ports to 1-99,999 or something, or would that leave my system wide open?

I'm sure it's possible, as there are instructions on portforward.com for subsonic on this model of router...

Thanks everybody for all the insight thus far, hopefully I can get it fixed!

Oh, and GJ51, I'd like to give you some feedback. I appreciate that you've taken the time to share your insight. You've clearly got people skills. I can see it in the way you convey ideas. You avoid making people feel dumb.

On the subject of the router, it's an ADSL modem router combo. A few years back, I worked for an ADSL ISP doing phone tech support. We used Thomson and Actiontec modems and modem router combos (though, none quite like this). The default IP address was always 192.168.1.254, so I'd guess it might be some kind of standard for ADSL modems.

[GJ51]

Are you sure you've got the model number right. Your screen shot doesn't look anything like the manual available online.

http://www.actiontec.com/products/manua ... %20NCS.pdf

http://portforward.com/english/routers/ ... tguide.htm

The only other thing I can think of would be if you are double NATed with another device doing DHCP?

Have you tested to see if canyouseeme.org gets a response to see if 8080 is open?

Last thought - we've seen routers that don't apply fwd rules that get rebooted and then work. You might try giving the router a reboot/refresh.

[pir8radio]

what kind of internet modem? Make sure it doesnt have a firewall built in the modem if you do you will create a double NAT... You will need to get into the modem config and set it to either be in bridge mode, or set the DMZ address to that of your router WAN interface... easy way to see if your modem has a router built in, is go into your config of your ROUTER and see what the WAN or INTERNET ip address is.. if its 192.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x then your modem is also a router...

[doomczar]

Definitely not double NAT'd, just the modem/router combo unit. That said, I think it might be the USB wifi adapter I'm using. I was plugged directly in via ethernet at my last residence... Thanks for the continued help, I'll keep posting my progress so that when we find a solution, others might learn from it.