topic Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports in Broadband & Landline

Port Forwarding not opening ports

Phteven98 — Wed, 06 May 2026 23:24:40 GMT

Hello,

I have been trawling the forums and the internet now for hours with no joy. I am trying to open ports 2302-2306 in order to host an Arma 3 server. The server is on a second PC on my network that I can connect to with my computer over a local connection, however the server is neither visible, nor possible to connect to via direct connect with IP from outside sources.
I have used both canyouseeme and ShieldsUP! to verify that none of the ports are open. canyouseeme says it cannot connect, and ShieldsUP! shows all 5 ports as "Stealth". I am unsure why this is not working, as I have set it up exactly as I had before while on EE's older router, but have not been able to get it going on the current router (Smart Hub 7).

I have tried:
- Restarting the router

-Disabling uPnP

- Factory Resetting the router

- Remaking the rules on different ports as a test, including 21, 2344 and 2302 individually, but all with the same closed/stealth result

The router is an EE Smart Hub 7 running firmware version r3.35.24-R-1648110-PROD-84001. Attached below is the saved port forwarding entry.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you for reading.

Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports

XRaySpeX — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:48:19 GMT

@Phteven98 : The EE SH 7 Plus is a fixed Home BB router, not mobile BB. So I have moved your thread appropriately so you get responses from the right sort of users.

After filling in those fields have you hit the '+' nearby before Saving it? Please show the whole page so we can see where you've got to in context.

Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports

Phteven98 — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:17:35 GMT

@XRaySpeX Thank you!

I have, yes, sorry, the port forwarding rule shown previously is the only one that's on the router. There are now no rules other than the 2302-2306 one labelled test as I factory reset my router and disabled UPnP, however the ports are still not open. I've attached more complete screenshots if this helps.

Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports

Phteven98 — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:22:59 GMT

I have now also tried setting the rule to TCP/UDP, as well as power cycling the router, still no joy.

Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports

bobpullen — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:12:10 GMT

@Phteven98 - is that the only rule in your saved list?

Note that many of the online checkers will not tell you if a UDP is open, they will be scanning for open TCP sockets. Is the server expecting UDP or TCP?

The port will also only show as open if the server is actively listening for connections. What operating system is the server running on and are you sure it's configured to accept connections from the Internet? (if Windows, make sure the network connection is set to 'private' and not 'public', and if *nix it's likely you'll need to fiddle with the firewall).

How exactly are you testing the local connection to the server over your network?

Re: Port Forwarding not opening ports

Phteven98 — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:15:07 GMT

@bobpullen You sir are an absolute gentleman. I completely forgot that I re-installed windows since I last ran a server. The issue was the network settings on the server PC being set to public. Thank you both for your replies, you have an awesome rest of your week.