topic Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding in Broadband & Landline

EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

garywood84 — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 23:23:41 GMT

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.

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

garywood84 — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 07:39:00 GMT

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!

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

garywood84 — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 17:35:40 GMT

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...

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Neil-O — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:51:14 GMT

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

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 22:35:13 GMT

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

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

bobpullen — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:16:55 GMT

@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...

@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.

@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.

@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?

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 11:39:04 GMT

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

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:46:33 GMT

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

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

bobpullen — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 14:21:35 GMT

@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?

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:07:10 GMT

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

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

bobpullen — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:30:58 GMT

@Bobby1214181 - what logs are you looking at and what are they telling you?

When you say your DDNS doesn't connect, do you mean it won't register from the hub, or is it registered correctly and you're just unable to use the DDNS name to reach the VPN server? Are you confident the DDNS hostname is still resolving to your current IP address? If you try connecting to the server via IP, is it any different?

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 16:21:34 GMT

@bobpullen for the DDNS issue I am getting :

alias xxxxx-yyyy-xxxx-yyyy, new IP# 192.168.0.99
Fatal error in DDNS server response: DDNS server response not OK
Error response from DDNS server, ignoring

For the openvpn I am getting :

Connection Attempt read UDPv4 [ECONNREFUSED]: Connection refused (fd=6 code=111)

Which I understand can be port forwarding issue.

Thanks

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

bobpullen — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:42:56 GMT

@Bobby1214181 - is that DDNS client running on the same router the VPN server is, and is that where the logging is coming from?

alias xxxxx-yyyy-xxxx-yyyy, new IP# 192.168.0.99

That IP is a local/private address. It isn't an IP address that I'd expect a DDNS client to be trying to send an update with. Not sure what DDNS provider you're using, but I would fully expect them to issue a bad response if you try sending an update containing a private IP address. It should be your public IP (that will be assigned to the EE hub).

I can't explain how it was working before, but it's all kind of pointing to a problem with the NAT translation/router daisy-chaining.

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:56:29 GMT

Hi @bobpullen

What I meant by the xxx-yyy was my host token, not IP address. I did not want to share it publicly. Sorry for the confusion.

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

bobpullen — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:57:42 GMT

@Bobby1214181 '- it was this bit I was referring to - 'IP# 192.168.0.99'.

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

Bobby1214181 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 19:46:32 GMT

Yes, that is private. The subnet that the EE SmartHub is on.

The other router is on 192.168.1.0 subnet.

The DDNS provider is DuckDNS.org

Thanks

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

garywood84 — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 21:31:58 GMT

Just reporting back on this: after rebooting the hub, it seems to have settled down, and for the rest of the week, port forwarding has been working as expected. I think it may just have needed a reboot after the automatic firmware update. Fingers crossed it will keep working fine...

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

gpgb — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:09:52 GMT

I wish I had read your article before agreeing to switch to EE from BT

Port forwarding does not work, IP address has now changed 4 times and no DDNS

Hopeless

Tried ringing EE support on this topic, no success

Very dissapponted

Re: EE Smart Hub Plus Port Forwarding

gpgb — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:13:55 GMT

Tried check-it

The external ports I specified in port forwarding are closed according to this web tool

Great tool, cant see how it is a windows issue, issue with the EE hub, looks like its going back to EE