topic Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic in Broadband & Landline

Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:48:22 GMT

I've hosted a football guessing website for a number of years on a dedicated server in my house (just for my friends for some fun). I've had no problems until a few weeks ago when I renewed my contract with EE broadband.

Now, I am getting weird intermitting problems with some of the guys trying to connect to my website. When they're on their home internet (different providers), they get a "Site cannot be reached ERR_TIMED_OUT" error - but when they drop off wifi and go on mobile internet, it magically just works. To add, sometimes when I restart the router it suddenly works for a while then stops working again.

I've got a dynamic DNS set on my router so I know it's not a problem with routing. It just, for some reason is not responding while on their home WIFI. Also, it's not all users - some can access fine both on home WIFI and mobile. It only seems to be https traffic affected, coming through on http fine all of the time. My certs are valid, my port forwarding hasn't changed for years so I know all that is setup fine.

I've done a full factory reset of the router, I've temporarily hosted the site on a different machine on the network. I'm all out of ideas. Anyone had any similar experience?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

Rach_H — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:15:34 GMT

Hi @rlyness,

Welcome to the Community!

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with your website, and I can understand your concern.

Do you know which WiFi provider the users who are struggling to connect to your site are using?

Rach

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

bobpullen — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:15:15 GMT

Anything changed at your end other than the act of renewing?

Does your router/network have any intrusion prevention/security software running that might be triggering false positives?

Is your Dynamic DNS just publishing an IPv4 address, or is it doing IPv6 too? Could the intermittency be due to whether or not the connection is attempted over IPv4 or IPv6 I wonder?

Does your router/website have any logging that you could check when these failures are encountered?

Are there any parental controls software/services running on the connections those having problems are using?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:13:09 GMT

I do know that 2 of the guys are on Virgin and another on Fibrus. I didn't ask some of the others.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:15:44 GMT

Hi @bobpullen

Thank you for your response. I can't think of anything that has changed that would cause this kind of problem.

I believe the DynDNS only publishes IPv4 but I would need to check this when I get home. I don't have any parental controls enabled on the router at all. I'm not sure where I would look for the logging to see if there are any obvious errors logged. It's just weird that it worked for so long and suddenly stopped.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

bobpullen — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:52:08 GMT

What router are you using @rlyness?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:57:16 GMT

Hi @bobpullen

I have a Smart Hub 6 plus. I do know there have been some significant software updates recently as I was previously unable to use the DynDNS service on the router but I now do have that option.

I don't think it's related but I do also suffer from this problem outlined on another thread: https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Microsoft-Teams/td-p/1555576

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

bobpullen — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:45:23 GMT

@rlyness - do you have the EE App setup and if so is 'Advanced Web Protect' enabled? Whilst not a Parental Control setting per se, that is intended to block any inbound traffic it thinks is 'sus'.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:53:12 GMT

Hi @bobpullen

I checked the app and it seems that feature is currently "activating" and won't seem to allow me to change it. I'm currently out of the house right now so I can check again later.

I have a screenshot but can't see here how to attach

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

XRaySpeX — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:38:21 GMT

Use the Camera icon above your text to upload an image file to here.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:50:23 GMT

@bobpullen

I de-activated the setting now but doesn't seem to have fixed it. The site is https://www.tenofthebest.co.uk

For some, it works on their PC, but phone on the same network it times out. Then, same phone, on mobile data, it works

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:29:50 GMT

@bobpullen

This is the screenshot I mentioned earlier. It stayed like this for a while when I had loaded the app. It stayed like this for a while until I went back in the app and it said it was then activated. I de-activated and asked my friend to test his connection to the site and it didn't work for him. I wonder would the router need a restart after this? I did notice there were a number of blocked connections in the last 7 days before de-activating

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:58:38 GMT

I came home after work and restarted the router with this setting turned off and it worked for about an hour and has not stopped working again

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

bobpullen — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:23:29 GMT

@rlyness - shouldn't need a router restart after the setting is changed but it's odd that it was stuck in that 'Activating' state for a while.

Seeing blocked connections is normal if you have any sort of server/service exposed to the Internet as it will attract a lot of unwanted attention. I get hundreds of these notifications a week.

When you view the notifications, it should tell you the IP address the traffic originated from and what it was trying to access. If those IPs match those of some of the problem visitors then it suggests you've found the culprit. It's all irrelevant though if the issue persists when the feature is disabled.

What is your server running on and have you checked the logs to for any evidence of these failed inbound connection attempts? Can you be condident that something's going wrong with them before they reach your server?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

Kixy — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:44:43 GMT

@rlyness have you tried resetting the App Pools?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:41:40 GMT

Just to add to the further confusion here. I use Whapi.cloud (they send a webhook to my server when a message is delivered on whatsapp). In their control panel I can test the connection to my server. You can see on my screenshot that it has delivered and accessed my endpoint on https successfully. This is because I just restarted my router and tested it again - it will however stop working in the next hour or two with an error:

{"error":{"code":409,"message":"Internal Error","details":"Error: ESOCKETTIMEDOUT"}}

When the hostname or port is completely wrong , their service shows:

{"error":{"code":409,"message":"Internal Error","details":"Error: ETIMEDOUT"}}

I can't seem to trace any failed request logs on my server - doesn't seem to get through to IIS when it fails with these errors. Is all this evidence pointing to a problem with my router?

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:30:35 GMT

And as expected:

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

RKYadav — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:36:06 GMT

Your website is opening fine on my EE Broadband and EE mobile data both.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

RKYadav — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:37:48 GMT

Last year I was facing some issues for instagram not working on EE broadband I disabled advanced web protection settings on EE router and this resolved the issue.

Re: Problem when hosting with incoming https traffic

rlyness — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:38:21 GMT

Thank @RKYadav - for the majority of our 40 players that is also the case. There are a select number that cannot access the site when on home wifi - but works fine on mobile etc