Open port/Port Forwarding with EE4g

[Rekning]

Hi all, 

I'm currently trying to set a device up on my 4G router & I need to set it so that a Port is open, I've gone into my router settings (TP-Link Archer MR200) and set up the virtual server, however on https://portchecker.co/ it still shows the port as closed. 

I've tried restarting the router etc, is this a EE4G issue rather than a router issue?

Any ideas or solutions, I need to fix this for work & we don't have a normal boardband connection, only 4G.

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Rekning ,

I recommend to check the WAN IP on the Archer MR200.

If you find this to be in the 100.64.0.0/10 (CGNAT) or 10.0.0.0/8 subnet, your WAN IP will not be publicly routable on the internet so there will be no point in configuring port-forwarding as no unsolicited traffic from the internet can ever hit your router.

Some business contracts on EE may provide an IPv4 that could be publicly routable. I'm only aware of Three via one of its APNs being a mobile service provider which give a publicly routable IP address.

One work-around is to use a VPN to get such a publicly routable IPv4 address. Another is a remote port-forward using ssh from your network to an outside endpoint which you control (e.g. AWS instance).

[Rekning]

Hi,

My router shows:

WAN Interface Name: LTE

Internet Status: Connected

IP Address: 100.120.**.**

Primary DNS: 109.249.***.***

I'm guessing that falls under the CGNAT issue?

If so, how would you go about using a VPN to solve the issue? 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Rekning ,

If you go down the VPN route, you'll need a service which assigns a publicly routable IPv4 address to each customer.

I suspect such services will become increasingly harder to find and would only be a short-term workaround.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/j5bhvc/bypass_cgnat_options/