EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

[garywood84]

I have received my Smart Hub Plus today, having been persuaded to move from BT Broadband to EE Broadband for the benefits of Wifi 6.

I have set up port forwarding in exactly the same way as I had it configured in my BT Smart Hub, to allow RDP access to my computer, but it's not working. 

Has anyone else successfully got Port Forwarding to work with this router? It looks like it's saved the settings, but behaves as if they are not applied.

[garywood84]

My router updated the firmware overnight, and now port forwarding works as expected.

But, Dynamic DNS has disappeared, so I can't configure No-IP.com! Very disappointed because BT persuaded me to move over to EE Broadband, but now I've lost functionality that I needed! Please, EE, put this feature back!

[garywood84]

I spoke to soon! The Port Forwarding has stopped working again! I'm not at home at the moment, but trying to log in to my computer remotely, and the router is blocking the request. I know that the computer is still running find within the network, because it's updating my NoIP details...

Anyone had similar problems? Having just moved over to EE from BT, and not having had any trouble with the Smart Hub 2 on BT, I'm worried that I might have made a mistake in switching if the router is flaky...

[Neil-O]

Hi @garywood84 I'm sorry to see you're having problems with port forwarding on your Smart Hub Plus, I'll highlight your post to the Hub team to make them aware. They might need more info to help with their investigation so I've also sent you a private message so you can get in touch with the moderation team.

Thanks

Neil

[Bobby1214181]

Hi there,

I am having problem with port forwarding also. A few work and are open when I check externally, but there is no way to get one new port that I want to open. I have tried sdd/delete several times an even a hard reset but nothing has worked. I think my router got updated in August and I can say I have been having a lot of issues since. 

If you have any suggestions please advise. 

Many thanks 

[bobpullen]

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@garywood84 wrote:

I spoke to soon! The Port Forwarding has stopped working again! I'm not at home at the moment, but trying to log in to my computer remotely, and the router is blocking the request. I know that the computer is still running find within the network, because it's updating my NoIP details...

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@garywood84 - port forwarding has been pretty rock solid for me (I've got 6 rules pointing to various services on my network).

What ports are you trying to forward and to where/what service?

If you navigate back to the port forward config in the router and click the 'Show IP address' button, is the IP address for the 'broken' rule still reflective of the address that's actually assigned to the machine/device?

Is the destination a Windows computer, and if it is, have you checked that the network connection is still configured as 'Private' with all the necessary discovery/sharing options enabled? I've known Windows to default the network to 'Public' in the past when a new hub is introduced, and that would break things.

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@Bobby1214181 wrote:

I am having problem with port forwarding also. A few work and are open when I check externally, but there is no way to get one new port that I want to open. I have tried sdd/delete several times an even a hard reset but nothing has worked.

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@Bobby1214181 - sounds like you're using a different model hub? Which is it?

Same question: what ports are you trying to forward and to where/what service? How are you checking externally, and are you certain that the service you're trying to access is 'listening' on the port in question?

[Bobby1214181]

Hi @bobpullen 

Mine is a EE Smarthub, an older from a few tears ago.

So I have a number of ports such as 80, 5001, 443 open for my NAS. The new port which used to work by the way, is 1194 for openvpn on a second router. The service is up. I have checked the IP is set to that router and it is not broken.

Apart from the error I get suggesting that port forwarding for that port us not working, I check using sites such as

https://portchecker.co/check-it

There are also other and they show my open ports correctly but not the 1194.

Many thanks

[Bobby1214181]

Hi @bobpullen 

I am trying to open port 1194, which was open before and working. Its for a openvpn server on a second router. Its IP is ok and not broken.

I have a EE smarthub.

I used https://portchecker.co/check-it to check open ports and I can see the open ones like 80, 5000 etc.

Thanks

Best

[bobpullen]

@Bobby1214181 - should definitely work.

I've got an openvpn server running on the same port, and whilst I've never used an EE Smart Hub, I have used the BT equivilent in the past without any difficulties.

Is the VPN server running on UDP or TCP and how do you authenticate to it? If it's running on UDP then I'm not sure a port checking website like the one you've linked to would show open (it doesn't for me yet I can still make a remote connection to the server).

How are the two routers configured/connected? Are you possibly subjecting yourself to a double-NAT scenario that's breaking things?

[Bobby1214181]

Hi @bobpullen 

Thanks for sharing.

I have been having issues, since some weeks with openvpn. It shows as Connected on the router, however my DDNS seems to not connect. It did before I upgraded the firmware on the router. I will delete and re-configure later to today, but from what I see in the logs, its a more port-forwarding issue. 

I have the other router on a different subnet and all works. The openvpn used to work until a few weeks ago, so I am not sure what has gone wrong. Im just eliminating one issue at a time.

Cheers