Help with my fibre (Alcatel-Lucent ONT)

Hello everybody.

I live in Qatar and have exhausted all possibilities with my ISP's tech support. Between the language barrier and the way they seem to be reading from a list of bullet points, providing me with the same answers over and over that are completely unrelated to my issue, I just can't get anywhere.

I know this is a big ask, but I don't really have another option, so I hope that somebody here, with a bit more knowledge than myself, can help me.
I will try to provide all the information I can below.

I have a 100mb fibre service with Vodafone. The fibre cable plugs into an Alcatel-Lucent I-010G-P ONT/ONU (documentation on this product seems rather scarce), and this plugs into my router's WAN port via Ethernet.
I have two routers - the Technicolor TG789v3 that they supplied me with and an Asus RT-N66U that I purchased.

The broadband performs well speed wise, however, I absolutely cannot access anything in my home network from outside of my home network, no matter how I forward ports or enable/disable UPnP, on either router.

My router obtains a private IP in the region of 10.x.y.z) but my actual public IP is in the 80.x.y.z region.

The ports are definitely configured correctly because the same Asus router plugged into my house back in the UK works perfectly.

From the numerous e-mails and hours on the phone, I have managed to find out that I cannot receive a static IP from Vodafone Qatar without signing up for Corporate internet (~£1700/month), nor will they allow me to receive a dynamic public IP straight to my router.

The only other fibre provider in Qatar is Ooredoo, who have the exact same static/public IP policies.

I have read on another forum that somebody experiencing a similar problem (albeit in another country with a different ISP) set his router up in bridge mode and then connected to the internet and performed all port forwarding in the ONT itself, which worked for them.

I've tried to do this but I cannot find or figure out the IP of the Alcatel ONT anywhere. I've plugged it into my computer and ran ipconfig to look for the default gateway, but it's empty. I've ran several "router detector" programs, but they find nothing. I've also scoured the internet but the few default Alcatel IPs have found do not work. I even tried plugging the Alcatel's Ethernet cable into a LAN port on the router, but nothing shown up on the router's connected devices page.
Choosing "get WAN IP automatically" in my router in this setup results in no internet connection.
Vodafone will not help me in regards to accessing the ONT, or in regards to opening the ports some other way. Their response is that "no other customer requires this". Their technical support here is absolutely awful.

In work, it can sometimes be very useful to VNC into my home computer, and I also like to play online games. I can't do either of these right now as all my incoming connections are completely ignored.

I hope I've provided all the information you need, and I hope that somebody can help me forward some ports to my computer.

I also apologise in advance if I've overlooked something or done something wrong!

Regards,

Chris

If the Internet port of the Asus is receiving a private IP range address, then the ONT or the network itself may be providing you with a private LAN IP or the ONT is a NAT router in its own right.

Highly likely that you are on what is termed as carrier grade NAT

Why are online games not working? Even if double NAT most commercial games should work, on Carrier Grade NAT if this is not setup right this can cause gaming issues.

The issues may also be partly down to local internet filtering policies and rules, i.e. by not handing out public IP addresses it makes running private servers harder.

Thanks for the reply.

Games *can* work. My friend has an Arma3 and a Mumble server in France. Sometimes I can connect fine to them, other times I have to reboot the router several times before I can connect, and other times I just can't connect at all that night.

On my xbox, my NAT setting shows as closed. 99% of the time, I end up in a lobby on my own, despite the ports being forwarded correctly (the same router and the same xbox work fine in the UK. I even turned UPnP off and relied solely on the port forwarding, which still worked).

I've ran various port checking tools and used uTorrent to check for an open port.
Same problem there too - no incoming connections at all. But again, the same setup works fine in the UK where my router gets a public IP.

Carrier grade NAT is probably what happening then and some searching appears to confirm this will be your problem.

Carrier Grade NAT makes it easier to filter/block material and will also help if suppliers are short on IPv4 based addresses.

Thanks for the reply again.

I'm guessing there's no way round this for me?

Pay for a public IP or create an outbound private tunnel to somewhere if they allow outbound VPN

I definitely don't have £1700 to burn on a public IP, so I'll take a look at a static IP VPN.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

Let us known how you get on. It may help MrSaffron help others .

And good luck.

Hey again.

Sorry to revive this, but I updated my router's firmware today and tested my ports again.
This time, one appeared as open. This is the TCP protocol of a Murmur/Mumble server I have running just to attempt to keep the port open. Confused, I went to make myself a coffee. When I got back, I noticed that other packets had been received, but after the test had finished.
I ran the test at approx. 16:03. Here is a link to the screenshot of the port test:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82561235/porttes...

I've ran the test several times afterwards with a similar result. However, my Mumble/Murmur server is still not accessible from outside my network.

Is this typical of a CGNAT? I'd have thought that if the port wasn't open, then I just wouldn't receive the test packets at all?

The trouble with CGNAT is that the external calls are not hitting your network - they are hitting the carriers network. They will not be passing the data for the packets from their public IP to your private IP - they have no way to sensibly do that on a network. If it is CGNAT then you will never see your internal network from the outside - you need your own public IP to do that.

I'm not entirely sure what benefit that port tester is giving you as it appears you are testing within the private network rather than testing access from the outside world.

Thanks for the reply Ian.

As far as I'm aware, that port tester listens for a response from the pcwintech.com server.

I am with Vodafone Qatar, who's technical support is rubbish and online forum is non existant. However I've read this thread from Ooredoo Qatar, where a user experiences the exact same issues as me. His router also receives a private IP. However (this is my take on the thread, I may be wrong!) after setting up his ONT/router correctly, he is able to forward ports and also use a DDNS service to access his computer from outside his network.

As far as PCWintech goes (and I know nothing directly about the software) I believe you are testing to the wrong IP (assuming it is connecting from an external server). The 192.168.0.2 address is internal to your network - nothing outside of your network will connect to your machine on that address.

You need to test to your public IP address. You can check your public IP address with this. Try doing the test to that address and see what you get back.

EDIT : Just having a quick look at that app... Not sure what it is doing with the IP address as it is odd that it has a field for it considering what it appears to be doing. Try doing a port forward to a different port on the router - say port 30000 - just to keep it up out of the way. You need to ensure the forward is to the same computer you are running the test on. Then run the software using that port.

Of course, that may already be what you've done but ideally you want to test a port on that software that isn't already being provisioned by another application.

It would be good to sort out if it really is CGNAT or not. I am coming to the feeling it isn't and it is the modem that is blocking the ports.

EDIT2: Never used this but it may be able to test an open port using your public IP.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 04-Sep-15 15:23:45)

It looks like it already checks on that IP. This is the screen during the tests
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82561235/porttes...
If I disconnect my WAN, all of the tests fail.

OK, that is proving it is testing the right thing and does suggest you do have some active port forwarding. Is the machine you are running that tool on the same PC as the one running the Mumble application? I assume your port forwarding is set to forward to 192.168.1.2 on port 13337 and that Mumble is running on that same IP?

I also assume you can access the service from another machine on your network on that port (or does Mumble require an external server to operate)?

Yes you're correct. My computer is 192.168.1.2, which is where I'm running the mumble server and port testing tool from.

Correct again - I can access the mumble server from my laptop and phone using both the 192.* address and the 10.* WAN address that my router shows in it's config panel.

Also, my router's routing table shows an IP region of 169.254.0.0. I can't seem to find the actual IP right now, perhaps because of the new firmware, but yesterday I could also access my router's config page and my mumble server using this 169.x.y.z IP.
I don't know if this is either normal or relevant, but I thought I'd mention it.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Sep-15 17:12:14)

Post deleted by ChocoStarfish

Running out of ideas here.

When someone tries to talk to you over mumble do they get any error messages?

It feels like something that Vodafone are doing but very difficult to diagnose further from thousands of miles away.

Ha yeah, it certainly makes things difficult. Is there anything I can do and relay to you?

Over LAN, communication on mumble is fine.
When trying to connect over WAN it just says connection error.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Sep-15 16:09:55)

As it stands I think you have an issue with Vodafone. But, given their level of expertise I am not sure how you can resolve. You have mentioned that someone else got this working - are you not able to get further info from that source? If it comes to hacking the modem then I can't help as we don't have that kit in the UK.

The other person got it working with Ooredoo. From what I can gather from his thread, his ONT was forwarding ports and then his router was too - causing the problem.
To resolve the issue he logged into his ONT (different make and model to mine. I can't find the IP for mine anywhere) and set his portforwarding rules there, then set his router up as a bridge.
Obviously without the ONT's IP, I can't set any port forwarding rules up there. Vodafone phone support have no idea what I'm talking about when I say ONT, and the technician I had come out to the house said he couldn't configure it or tell me the IP. He rang his supervisor who said the same thing.

I've tried putting my router into DMZ but nothing changes.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Sep-15 16:18:47)

ok can you try this:

1.plug everything back in so that you have internet access.

2. open a cmd and run "pathping bbc.co.uk"
this should ping all of the hops on that route. hop 1 will be your local computer running the pathping, 2 will be the gateway for this network. paste the results and I may be able to help.

<de-lurks>

Hello,

Just thought you might be interested in a solution I came up with in a similar situation (device connected to a 4G router, and therefore using CGN, which we needed to be able to establish external connections to);

The 4G router we are using has a VPN client so I created a virtual private server (VPS) on Digital Ocean (the cheapest machine available is $5 p/m and includes up to 1TB of traffic, plenty I should think). We establish a VPN from the router to the VPS and, with some port forwarding set up in iptables, we're able to talk to the device connected to the router at the other end of the VPN using the VPS's public IP address.

If you can create an outgoing VPN from your router you might be able to do something simliar. However, in terms of gaming this might add a bit of latency to your connection - it's not a concern in our use case so I haven't tested it.

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Sep-15 16:52:10)