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Forum Discussion
RBK50 Port Forwarding Help
Trying to port forward port 51820 to the world. I have a service running on 192.168.1.19 that exposes this port with no local firewall. The service running is running currently and exists. Runnin...
How are you testing the port forwarding?
Can you make a screen shot of the Orbi Port Forwarding page?
I attached the picture. I just tested the service as well on a local device, and the service is available at 192.168.1.19:51820. However the port is not open. Testing using a VPN app -> DuckDNS -> public IP, did not work. Used https://portchecker.co/check and still nothing. Used a couple of other testers and still nothing.
First, I cannot see that anything is incorrect. This is exactly what I do to open ports for testing. Are you forwarding TCP or UDP?
(I ask that because this custom port forwarding rule has been given a title "VPN".)
Orbi supports OpenVPN Server (so external devices can connect into the Orbi LAN), which I have running. I noticed that OpenVPN uses UDP rather than PCP and ran a test on my Orbi using https://check-host.net/check-udp?host=172.249.115.199:12973 and 12974. Both scans were ambiguous. If your app is a UDP app, then perhaps port scanning is not going to be successful.
Found one comment about how difficult it is to do UDP port scans: https://serverfault.com/questions/416205/testing-udp-port-connectivity
The mention of DuckDNS adds another complexity. If you are using DDNS as a means to allow the service to remain available even when the ISP changes your public IP, it might be worth testing against the actual IP first before introducing DDNS into the situation. (That's what I did when I implemented OpenVPN on the Orbi.) I hope you are aware that Orbi's DDNS works only with a couple of DDNS providers.
So far, I have not come up with much in the way of assistance. Sorry.
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, it's a WireGuard VPN service on a Raspberry Pi on my network.
On Wifi, on my iPhone, I can set the endpoint for the VPN to 192.168.1.19:51820 and have it tunnel correctly.
I then took my iPhone off wifi, replaced 192.168.1.19 with my public IP, and the tunneling stopped working.
That leads me to believe the ports are not forwarded correctly. And yes, I selected UDP from the dropdown.
Oh, fun. I have been thinking about WireGuard and have a Pi to put it on. (With OpenVPN working, I am not entirely sure why, but then it's not necessary to have a good reason to try things.)
And, yes, that is exactly how I tested Orbi's OpenVPN. Took my phone off WiFi, opened a Hot Spot, connected laptop's to the Hot Spot and ran OpenVPN Client. Got OpenVPN working on Android, Windows 10, and Linux Mint.
There is another (ghastly) thing to try. Put that Pi into Orbi's DMZ. That's on the Advanced Tab, WAN Setup page. Of course, this means the Pi will see every packet that comes in. Would be a way to determine that "the internet" is not somehow filtering out these packets. If it doesn't work with the Pi in the DMZ, then Orbi port forwarding is not the issue.
Good Luck!
I even tried enabling dynamic DNS and VPN in Orbi, transferring the ovpn file to my iPhone, using OpenVPN connect to try and connect. Nothing happens. Changed OpenVPN Connect to use UDP only. Looked at logs to verify it was trying to connect on the port that Orbi specified. That didn't work either. The dynamic DNS address orbi gave me did resolve to my public IP, so that's not wrong either. Really grasping at straws here....