Please help me with port forwarding issue *UPDATE #2*

[PurdueRy]

I have a US robotics USR 5461 MaxG wireless/wired router. I have always had issues getting port forwarding to work correctly all the time but typically things worked well enough that I wasn't concerned about it. Well, I got a PS3 and the internet works...but I feel like it should be faster than it is. I am also getting some "network errors" when trying to stream video on the PS3 from another one of my computers.

So I went to www.portforward.com which I have always liked to use as a resource and they have my router there as an option. I set up a static IP for my main computer(192.168.2.136) and confirmed that it was connected to the gateway(192.168.2.1) at that IP.

Anyway, I went to the port forwarding section of my router's settings and entered in the ports as instructed on the website and saved the settings. First port I opened was for Skype. I went to a open port checking website and checked the port and it was reported open. Fantastic right? No...

I then remembered that I had seen this before. For some reason(specifically with skype) if I have the program open, a open port checker will report that the port is indeed open. If I close out of the program, the port goes closed.

Any other port I attempted to open in the same manner always came back reported closed. Skype seems to be the only one I can get to work reliably once the program is open.

I am curious as to what skype could be changing once opened that causes my ports to be seen as open. I have AVAST! antivirus and I turned off all the protection besides the "standard" one. I don't have a third party firewall running. Windows firewall is running but was set to exclude some of the programs I ran and they still came back closed.

Does anyone have ANY idea what Skype can control that would allow it to make an unopened port...open? I think that's the only clue I have to go off. I find it weird that the US robotics control panel has a "port triggering" area and in the explanation of it it says this is for "opening holes in the firewall" that might be necessary for some programs. It then says that "port forwarding" is not typically a setting that needs to be messed with.

I don't think this problem has to do with the router anymore because of the Skype matter and also because I have completely turned off the router firewall and ports still come back blocked. I doubt all these ports are blocked by my ISP(especially since Skype can seem to override it). Is there typically a firewall in a cable modem that needs to be set as well? I saw for some DSL models you can get into a control panel by typing 192.168.0.1. I tried this from a wirelessly connected computer but wasn't able to access it. Perhaps I would have to connect directly to it and not through the router?

We have WOW! Cable internet service(w/VOIP). Thanks for any help you can lend. I would really love to get this working reliably.

 

[jaqie]

OK, a few things here to get you on the right track. I don't know if skype itself does UPnP forwarding, but if that is on in your router, there's a good chance it is opening its' own port with that. There are also some 'tricks' that programs can do to allow connections to a server without opening ports, and I believe skype is one of the programs that can do those tricks - they can get around NAT routers with no port forwarding at all. Your router and port forwarding problems themselves sound like you have a serious issue with the router being wonky... personally, I would replace it with one that can run DDWRT or another GOOD firmware. I know USR in the last 5 plus years has turned to utter crap in general, I would not buy their stuff if it was on sale for $1 each.
With motorola cablemodems, I believe their default IP is 192.168.100.1 if your cablemodem is another brand, google a bit to find its' default IP... but most cablemodems are just a bridge - no NAT functions to really speak of.

 

[PurdueRy]

Ok I took your advice because I am tired of this router not doing what I tell it to. One would figure that if I completely disabled the router firewall I would have no issues with ports being blocked anymore...guess not.

I ordered a Linksys WRT54GL which I think sounds good for my use. It does the DDWRT thing you talked about which I will have to read up more on. As long as I can open my damn ports reliably, I'll be happy.

 

[jaqie]

You won't be disappointed

 

[blahsome]

I recommend Tomato for user-friendliness.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: blahsome
I recommend Tomato for user-friendliness.

Would I want to use a user-developed firmware if I am not trying to do anything overly complicated? I just want a reliable connection that allows me to control the open and closing of ports...which it appears the US robotics did not allow me to do...at least not well.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: jaqie
You won't be disappointed

Thanks I appreciate your comments. I have been wanting to change the router for a while now...I guess the frustration finally caught up with me.

 

[jaqie]

I tried tomato a couple times... and the performance was horrible compared to DD-WRT. I posted at length on this somewhere, but the short version is that tomato is horribly slow compared with more then one user.

The main reason to flash the WRT54GL to a third party firmware is that it has had a lot more work put into it then the official firmware has, meaning it is a lot more stable, and has a lot more features. The biggest problem with the standard firmware is that it keeps records of really, REALLY old connections until it runs out of RAM and then doesnt dump the old ones causing horribly crappy router performance (this is actually the reason most routers are so crappy)... and the third party firmwares have that option quite easily to tune that and many things to your heart's content. You can find tons of guides on tuning DD-WRT routers, from the simple to tuning it to perform great without tons of work to doing all kinds of advanced and crazy things to it, including adding on serial ports and SD card slots to it.

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: jaqie
I tried tomato a couple times... and the performance was horrible compared to DD-WRT. I posted at length on this somewhere, but the short version is that tomato is horribly slow compared with more then one user.

care to link us? these may be YOUR experiences with Tomato, but i known many who run it without issue. the above statements should be treated as opinion, not fact ;x

if you want to make an informed decision about which to run, read through the thousand-some posts and reviews on this topic and try both out for yourself.

 

[jaqie]

link you to what? I *SAID* they were my experiences, what's your gripe?

 

[PurdueRy]

Ok, well I got the router and had it up and running in now time. I decided to try out Tomato from what I had read online it seemed to be the one to go with. I set up static IP's and set the port forwarding rules. When I checked the ports they did show open which was a relief to finally have it working.

Now the bad part. Last night I opened up my Torrent client and it came up with the "Red exclamation point" which basically means port forwarding wasn't working. So I went and checked my port to see if it was open through a port check website and sure enough it came up closed. I checked out my router's forwarding settings and nothing had changed. My static IP 192.168.1.151 had port 49163 forwarded. I tried multiple ports to see if it was just one port having a problem but nothing worked. I then enabled uPnP in uTorrent. Once this was done the port showed up as being open.

Does anyone have any idea why when I enter the port forwarding information manually, I get the port being closed and when uPnP is enabled it would be open? The only difference I can see in the settings is that when uPnP is enabled it forwards UDP and TCP separately whereas I have mine set to "both".

I tried completely resetting the router firmware which didn't result in any change. I also set my static IP to be in the DMZ and the port still came back blocked. I tried shutting down programs that could be putting up a software firewall but have come up empty handed so far. I tried the port on another computer but just realized I didn't change the forwarding IP so I can't claim to have correctly tested to see if its specifically something on my computer yet.

 

[jaqie]

Are you allowing the program rights to go through windows firewall?
http://www.microsoft.com/windo...ernet/sp2_wfintro.mspx

Better double check, because I *KNOW* port forwarding works properly in tomato with the WRT series.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah, it sounds like a local firewall (on your own PC) is blocking inbound traffic. Hook a second PC to your local network and see if you can Telnet to your Torrent Client port and get a response:

telnet <mycomputer> 49163

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: jaqie
Are you allowing the program rights to go through windows firewall?
http://www.microsoft.com/windo...ernet/sp2_wfintro.mspx

Better double check, because I *KNOW* port forwarding works properly in tomato with the WRT series.

I had the windows firewall disabled. I even went so far as to stop the service altogether. I'm running Vista so I'm not sure if there is something else I need to change. I am just lost as to why it worked fine one day and not the next.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Yeah, it sounds like a local firewall (on your own PC) is blocking inbound traffic. Hook a second PC to your local network and see if you can Telnet to your Torrent Client port and get a response:

telnet <mycomputer> 49163

I agree with you on the local firewall theory. I just don't know where it would be...as I said I disabled the windows firewall completely. The only other thing I could imagine blocking the ports is AVAST! antivirus but I have most of the extra functionality beyond the basic scanner in that disabled.

I am going to try a different computer when I get home from work. Would I just do that telnet from a communications program(hyperterminal) or can I use the command prompt?

I am glad that technically its working ok provided that I let it do uPnP. However, I like the added assurance of manually setting some of my most used programs.

 

[PurdueRy]

Ok well I tried forwarding a port on another computer...nogo.

So I tried connecting a computer directly to the modem...nogo.

I disabled the windows firewall and the antivirus program....nogo.

I called up my ISP and they said they only block a few ports for security which I imagine are the big ones that are commonplace. However I can't get any ports to open at all.

 

[RebateMonger]

Telnet used to be enabled by default in XP. Now you have to enable it in Vista. Search Vista "Help" for "telnet". I always do my Telnet tests from the command prompt. Much simpler that way.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Telnet used to be enabled by default in XP. Now you have to enable it in Vista. Search Vista "Help" for "telnet". I always do my Telnet tests from the command prompt. Much simpler that way.

Yeah I know where to do that is in Vista actually . I Went and enabled it on my computer I wanted to try it from as a client(I hope that's correct) and the computer I tried to connect to has winXP. I typed in telnet 192.168.1.127 49162(port I opened on the win XP computer) and it came up connect failed.

Did I do this right?

I am at a loss for while this suddenly won't work without uPNP. I am beginning to blame my modem/provider. Considering I tried connecting directly to the modem and things are still blocked.

EDIT: I tried telnet-ing from my own computer to my own computer, it doesn't work either. It only works if I have a uPNP app open which is opening that port.

 

[PurdueRy]

So after messing with this problem a bit longer I have the problem tracked down to not being able to forward a majority of the ports....however some do work.

Here are the ports that I have found can be opened:

135
139
445
554
2869
5357
10243
49152-49157
49160

I did notice one thing that I think is interesting. If I don't forward a port, the open port check website reports "Connection timed out". If I did try to open the port it reports "Connection refused"

Anybody have any ideas what might still be "refusing" these connections?

Interestingly enough, "Port detective" claims most all my ports are open. When I tested the ports that were reported open by the other program with port detective...it says port already in use...

 

[jaqie]

It's an OS issue, you figured that out quite a while ago. Don't bother with all this playing around that you are doing now, as itll lead you nowhere - wild goose chase. Something is blocking ports or screwing with your networking and/or TCP/IP stack in your OS. If I had to take a wild guess, I would say the OS is fubar and it is time to do a fresh install.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: jaqie
It's an OS issue, you figured that out quite a while ago. Don't bother with all this playing around that you are doing now, as itll lead you nowhere - wild goose chase. Something is blocking ports or screwing with your networking and/or TCP/IP stack in your OS. If I had to take a wild guess, I would say the OS is fubar and it is time to do a fresh install.

I wanted to try one more thing...I have an internet browser in the PS3. I can do the open port check on that. If I open the ports for the Playstation network and it reports them open...then I'll assume its something weird with the OS. However, it is pretty much a fresh install as is.

 

[Muadib]

Is your Vista network setup as public?