Port forwarding doesn't seem to be working

[#1]

You're definitely not alone; I've spent hours troubleshooting my router, and switch, trying to identify any configuration conflicts that might be causing this issue. However, deep down, I know that I haven't made any changes to configuration. Upon inspecting the logs, I noticed that no packets are reaching my WAN port that includes port number data. This observation strongly suggests that the issue lies with Plusnet.

[#2]

worth checking.

Open port checker : Www.grc.com 

[#3]

Unfortunately, that resource won't be of much help to us. Nonetheless, thank you for suggesting it. Is there a way we can directly contact Plusnet technical support to look deeper into this issue?

[#4]

I have not had any issues with port forwarding either TCP, UDP. some examples I've created in the past, the RDP one did work. 

@golden_fibre 

I would suggest you try creating a rule to forward port 5000 external to 5000 internal so see if it works, if you are worried about exposing 5000 on the internet then create a map as I did for RDP.

I would always advise not to use common port for forwarding as these are often probed, where possible I use ports in the range  49152–65535

HTH

[#5]

@golden_fibre  Have you enabled Plusnet's safeguard ?

Have you got any port forwarding working ?

[#6]

No I checked yesterday, Safeguard is off (and has always been off, never used it).

I've tried inputting a bunch of ports in the router's port forward settings and none of them work, the port checker tools all say they're simply closed.

[#7]

It is important to know if the device the port forwarding rule points to is off or or the application is not running then the port checker will not work, the checker confirms the connection to the device through the firewall, not the fact the port forward rule exists

Edit: Does the camera server have a cli?

[#8]

Everything is running, can access `[server_ip]:80` and `[server_ip]:5000` (and a bunch of other services) on my local network just fine.

[#9]

How is your home network setup, is it a flat LAN (192.168.1.0/24) or do you have a second router with its own address range? 

[#10]

Totally normal 192.168.1.0/24, one router.

[#11]

Port forwarding works for me and always has, using https://www.ipfingerprints.com/portscan.php I check 53389 and I see this result

PORT      STATE SERVICE
53389/tcp open  unknown 

My Hub event log reports

10:36:53, 13 Nov. FWL Port Forward Server(IP-of windows PC) TCP 3389 accepted a new connection from 5.79.75.134

Does your event log have any entries like the above?

The event log will report incoming connection for a port forward rule even though there is no device active for the rule.

10:45:42, 13 Nov. FWL Port Forward Server(IP-of windows PC) TCP 60000 accepted a new connection from 5.79.75.134

but port checker reports.

PORT      STATE    SERVICE
60000/tcp closed   unknown

So if you're not seeing the incoming connection when you test it the port forward rule is not working.

[#12]

@golden_fibre  Could you temporarily open external port 80 to internal port 80 and point to your server, then ask someone away from your network to test it ? Bit of a pain but if you eliminate the obvious.....................

[#13]

What machine is the reverse proxy configured on? If it's Windows, then is the network connection configured as private rather than public and all the necessary sharing/discovery settings enabled etc?

Are there any clues in the NGINX logging?

Agree that removing the reverse proxy from the equation would be helpful in temporarily eliminating a point of failure.

[#14]

It's an Ubuntu machine. Tried with `ufw` off and on (allowing 80/443), nothing got through.

The nginx logs only log something when requesting `[server_ip]:80` on my network, not going to the `[public_ip]:80`.

Running `tcpdump` on the server also logs when coming from `[server_ip]:80` but not `[public_ip]:80`.

Been trying out https://www.ipfingerprints.com/portscan.php which says "filtered", and when using that website to test the Event Logs on the router do say something like:

"FWL Port Forward Server([my server ip]) TCP 80 accepted a new connection from [ipfingerprints public ip]"

So it's getting dropped somewhere. I'll have to try port forwarding to some other machine to test.

[#15]

Oh man, it worked, port forwarded to a different device and could access it.

Which means something is blocking the request on my server, even with ufw off, with or without nginx reverse proxy (also tried lighhttp), while still working fine on my local network, but now that's for me to find out.

Anyway thanks for all your help! And if anyone else ends up on this thread with similar problems, just try forwarding to a different IP and see if that works.