Standard Port Forwarding not working

[Bondy86]

EE Full Gig broadband using a EE Smart Hub Wifi 7 router
Followed the User Guide and a YouTube video but CANNOT get port forwarding to work.

https://youtu.be/LJ3X3dD3DFU?t=648

I can 100% access those devices via my LAN on those ports and they work 100%
Cannot access them via my WAN IP address on those ports.
PortChecker shows the ports are closed.

However when I put the server into a DMZ (DO NOT RECOMMEND) I can then access the ports from my WAN which must mean the Router/Firewall is not working correctly.

Please can someone recommend a fix for me.
Kind regards,

[JimM11]

@Joycee501 @Pecbeck Have you seen link with the latest FW supplied!

EE Smart Hub 7 Plus Router Firmware - The EE Community

[Joycee501]

Yes, I'm on the latest firmware and seems that port 80 just redirects to the hub gui before considering any port forwarding rules.

Funnily enough, I came across this post and it pretty much fully describes the issues I'm now facing https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Smart-Hub-Plus-can-you-forward-port-80/td-p/1543834...

Now I have to find whether I can disable this, or I'll have to use an external alias to route to 80... It's all very frustrating 

[JimM11]

@Joycee501 Ok was not sure because off the 4001 ref, the important part is the  r3.35.24-R-1648110 that is the new FW version!

[Pecbeck]

What exactly are your port forwarding rules. Say the sever on your private lan say 192.168.1.51, then i assume you have internal 80 80, external 80 80 protocol tcp, with device,,e.g 192.168.1.51 

Same for port  443

If you are running npm(nginx gui) connecting to internal ports 80 and 443, the if you browse (with vpn if possible so its out on the Internet) to your external ip address (89.x.x.x) you should see an nginx welcome screen. Then if you set up your proxy host in npm and request ssl certificate,  it should all work

I would send a screenshot but can't see any way to attach jpg to this post

I'm on r3.35.24-R-1648110-PROD-84001

[JimM11]

@Pecbeck You may not have reached the level allowed to attach yet on your postings, if the camera icon is shown then you can!👍

[Joycee501]

Exactly that. 

Nginx:80 | 192.168.1.87 | 80 | 80 | 80 | 80 | TCP

Nginx:443 | 192.168.1.87 | 443 | 443 | 443 | 443 | TCP

Hitting my external IP from VPN gives a timeout, hitting it from my lan goes to the hub manager

[Pecbeck]

How are you running nginx? Docker or standalone?  I use NPM in docker, exposing 80nand 443

Are you sure your reverse proxy ion 192.168.1.87 is static ip  and specifying 80 and 443?

Browsing 80 from your lan doesn't really make sense. Nginx needs to connect to 80. What ip are you browsing to, .87?

[Joycee501]

Running nginx standalone. My server is a Debian 12 headless server, definitely static IP and ports forwarded.

Sorry, should have been clearer. When I say browsing to 80 within LAN, I mean browsing to my domain in dynu, on a device connected to the Linux box. All very frustrating, my old EE Smart Hub just handled it...

[Pecbeck]

So exactly same config that worked on old router?

What do you see at https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

[Joycee501]

Yep, exactly the same. Port 80 shows closed, port 443 shows open