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Forum Discussion
Port Forwarding a Netgear r6400v2
Model: r6400v2 Firmware: Latest (1.0.4.106_10.0.80) OS: Windows 10 x64 Hey there. I've been picking away at this issue for a day and it's been pretty tiring. I hope I can find some help here. ...
> My external IP address matches what's on my router, and I created an
> IP reservation for the desktop that runs the computer.
What _is_ that address? If you're worried about revealing secrets,
then the top half of the address, "a.b" out of "a.b.c.d", would satisfy
most of my curiosity. Or, plug that address into the form at:
https://whois.arin.net/ , and see if it is a public or private address.
> The IP reservation is 192.168.1.3. The port I forwarded on specifies
> 192.168.1.3 as the target IP.
Sounds good.
> I've walked through the port forwarding steps [...]
That's a little vague.
> [...] connected my PC directly to the modem (did work, so my ISP isn't
> an issue), [...]
What is your "the modem"? Is it a modem, or a modem+router, or what?
> [...] I've also added a custom inbound rule on my firewall [...]
What is your "my firewall"? Software on the Windows system, or a
separate box, or what?
> [...] I use netstat in the command line to double check [...]
That's nice, but I can't see your command or its output.
> [...] I'm really not sure what it could be.
You might try my list of usual problems:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/x/x/m-p/1859106
You seem to have "2" and "3" covered, from what you say.
> Here is another weird issue: [...]
The number of complaints around here, across various models and
firmware versions, regarding the names in an Attached Devices report
beggars the imagination. I would not hold my breath while waiting for
Netgear to fix the problem(s).
> I've been digging around and it seems like there are a lot of similar
> port forwarding issues listed all over the net, [...]
Thanks for the helpful links. Many people have trouble with port
forwarding, but many people also don't understand it well enough to spot
the causes. With Netgear router firmware, many defects are possible,
but I can't remember a case where the router was the cause of a
port-forwarding problem.
(Unless, that is, you count the D7000v2, where NAT loopback doesn't
work, so any use of the WAN IP address from the LAN tends to fail. But
even there, it still worked from the outside world.)
Hey, thanks for answering, I appreciate it.
I have figured out the issue at this point; for some reason the port was forwarding correctly, but my firewall was blocking the request. I went ahead and tested a few things, including disabling my firewall, just to confirm that everything was going well. Seems to be working fine now.
When I say "My external IP address matches what's on my router, and I created an IP reservation for the desktop that runs the computer", I know you're just trying to confirm that I know what I'm talking about, and I appreciate the steps you take here to make sure that a user didn't miss anything simple. However, that wasn't the issue :p
For what it's worth, when I say "I've walked through the port forwarding steps", what I mean is that I set up the port correctly according to the netgear tech I was on the phone with. Give me some credit here, I was workin' on it for 12 hours. :P
When I say "my modem", and I'm talking about a separate router, I'm talking about the modem provided by my ISP (Charter Spectrum). You can assume that it's separate from the router considering I listed a separate router in the title of the post.
When I say "my firewall", it's Windows Defender Firewall. Useless gd program, lol.
For netstat, I used "netstat -a -n" and then read through the TCP/UDP addresses to see if there were any ports listening at those addresses. This is what led me to understand that my firewall was blocking requests.
As a lesson for future people having trouble port forwarding their routers:
1.) Check everything on the host computer that could potentially block the port, such as the firewall.
2.) If the Netgear tech tells you it's defective, it means they hit the end of their script. Try a few other things.
3.) Reply to this forum post if you'd like to receive any troubleshooting tips from me for setting up a Minecraft server. I went through hell and I won't let you go through it if I could help it.
Let me know if you have any further questions--nothing to do these days except chat about port forwarding on the Netgear community forums.
Qyooothank you very much for your sleuth work and write up. I have one follow-on question:
> ...for some reason the port was forwarding correctly, but my firewall was blocking the request.
Can you offer a micro-tutorial on how to tweak Windows Defender to stop blocking the reqeust? (I'm sure I can figure it out, but you've been down that path...)
Hey!
You're lucky I was checking my email. c:
In order to configure Windows Defender Firewall to accept a custom TCP port, you need to create a custom "inbound rule" for that port.
It's pretty simple, and I'll pass you a link here to the tutorial I used.
I'm on Windows 10 x64 so I'm not sure how this'll apply elsewhere. In the end I had to take down my firewall completely just to confirm that it's working--this will tell you whether or not the firewall is the problem, lol.
Thank you for the pointers!
I set up a test that didn't involve Windows (and Windows Defender) and concluded that the firewall was not the issue. Gory details in:
(P.S.: I've since update my firmware to V1.0.11.116_10.2.100 but for some reason the forum software won't let me reply to my own post.)