Port Forwarding Smart Hub 6

[79Chris79]

I'm trying to set up port forwarding on my hub for my NAS, I've watched many videos and blogs. And trawled the forums here... But for the life of me it will not work.

Just says port is closed on port checker websites..

[XRaySpeX]

Let's see your Port Forwarding setting & we may be able to advise you further.

[79Chris79]

Hello, thanks for the reply.

I have 2 rules, pointing at my NAS IP - ports 80 and 443 so I can access the NAS from elsewhere when not at home.

When I check the port on port checker - it says closed - I have seen things about a factory reset might fix it - but I am unsure why this isn't working...

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/getting-started/set-up-port-forwarding

[XRaySpeX]

Shouldn't the External Ports & Internal Ports be swapped?

Aren't you trying to access the HTTP & HTTPS of NAS by letting external users come in on other arbitrary incoming ports?

Ports 80 & 443 incoming to the router are the router's own HTTP & HTTPS.

[79Chris79]

I am following this blog for it

https://mariushosting.com/how-to-enable-https-on-your-ugreen-nas/

Step 8 is the one where I think it is going wrong / failing

The start / end box also havw a tendancy to go red and nothing can be saved...

And of course not as easy as the video suggests

https://youtu.be/LJ3X3dD3DFU?si=clpJhjTUSWHJTfgy&t=647

[XRaySpeX]

Step 8 will never work as external ports 80 & 443 are already active ports of the router & so you can't also use them for the NAS.

Your Port Forwarding should be like:

Rule	Device	External Ports	Internal Ports	TCP/UDP
80	NAS	9999-9999	80-80	TCP/UDP
443	NAS	9443-9443	443-443	TCP/UDP

& tell your external users to come in on port 9999 or 9443.

However it looks like Step 6 has already carried out this mapping. So if you've already applied Step 6 to the NAS, your Port Forwarding should look like:

Rule	Device	External Ports	Internal Ports	TCP/UDP
80	NAS	9999-9999	9999-9999	TCP/UDP
443	NAS	9443-9443	9443-9443	TCP/UDP

[bobpullen]

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@XRaySpeX wrote:

Step 8 will never work as external ports 80 & 443 are already active ports of the router & so you can't also use them for the NAS.

---

You can. There's no issue at all forwarding inbound traffic on these ports to a device on your network. It's exactly what I do for a server I'm running.

@79Chris79 - we need to understand how your NAS is configured to accept traffic from the Internet and on what ports? A port checker will only show things as open if there's something behind the port forwarding rule actively listening for traffic.

It would also help to understand exactly how you plan on trying to access the NAS externally e.g what web address would you be using?

Are there any other port forwarding entries visible in the Hub manager, or is it just the two you're trying to add?

[79Chris79]

thanks, i'll give it another go

[79Chris79]

I'm following that example below, and have set up a domain name at NOIP...

https://mariushosting.com/how-to-enable-https-on-your-ugreen-nas/

https://my.noip.com/

and set up a proxy manager there - but the SSL but fails...

https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-nginx-proxy-manager-on-your-ugreen-nas/ 

I  am not sure if it is the port forwarding rule causing that though...

[bobpullen]

@79Chris79 - don't know if you're still struggling with this but a failure at the stage in your pic suggests that the SSL certificate issuer's HTTP challenge is failing. This would happen if the NGINX proxy is unreachable from the outside world on port 80/443.

I have to admit, it does feel like you're trying to tackle quite a lot of stuff at once - especially if it's all new to you! Reading through the articles you've shared, we're not just talking port forwarding; there's also Docker containers, reverse proxy configurations, dynamic DNS and SSL certificate issue/installation! All aspects that could go wrong.

If I were to offer you my interpretation of things then it would be that you need to be forwarding the vanilla ports as below. I doubt you need UDP to be honest but that's what the article is suggesting 🤷: -

Rule	Device	External Ports	Internal Ports	TCP/UDP
HTTP	NAS	80-80	80-80	TCP/UDP
HTTPS	NAS	443-443	443-443	TCP/UDP

If it were me struggling, then I'd be configuring my NAS (or something else) to briefly listen on the above ports to see if I can get to them remotely/using a port checker. Assuming you can then the port forwarding works and you can then worry about introducing everything else.

Please also take a moment to read about the risks of exposing stuff to the Internet, especially if there's important/sensitive stuff on your NAS that you would not want to put under jeopardy.