Port Forwarding on Hyperoptic

Using Router ZXHN H298A v1.0
No matter what I do, I cannot get manual port forwarding to work.

I have my imac set up in the DHCP table.
I pay £5 a month to have a static IP.
I've set up the port forwards exactly as advised in online help.
I'm not running a firewall on the imac.
Nothing, nada - every port I try to manually open stays reported as closed.

UPnP works, but I need to manually configure a few open ports.

Hyperoptic support have been ok, but they say they don't really give this kind of support!
They have confirmed my settings are all good to go but cannot think why its not working.

Any clues out there?

Hi there! Though we can't do much about port forwarding, we'd like to check if everything is set on the router. Feel free to PM your address and we'll get back in touch.

Thanks for responding.

As a last ditch attempt, I'm being sent a new router from H/O to see if that helps.

Hi @McHaggis69,

Why do you need to open ports? Are you trying to host a webserver or email server? I hope you're aware that by opening ports and having no firewall on your iMac you leave yourself open to being hacked and having personal info stolen by evil so-and-so's that will then leave you flat broke. I've had this issue with my Windows 10 Professional laptop when I'm trying to setup a PPTP VPN server whenever I rebuild my laptop. I've found that sometimes it takes it takes several reboots before the settings work properly. If you're in the Hampshire area then PM me and I could, possibly help with your issue.

HTH,

In reply to a post by McHaggis69:

Any clues out there?

What application are you trying to forward? I'm guessing it is unlikely a game. Are you running a web server or similar, or an application in a container, or virtual machine?

How are you testing and confirming it is not working?

OK -

new router arrived (same as old).
Plugged in.
Turned off wifi (all connections wired)
Set up the DHCP server to allocate 192.168.1.199 to my imac
Reboot imac - sure enough it now has its IP fixed at 192.168.1.199
Add new 'test' rule to port forward/allow all incoming traffic on port 65299 to 192.168.199
Use https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ to check and you guessed it, the port remains closed to outside connections.

Reboot router, reboot imac. No change.

So the new router works no differently from the old in that it simply does not work or perform port forwarding correctly.

I even put 192.168.1.199 into a DMZ and still port scanning tools report everything closed...

So - narrowing things down - my MAC must be blocking traffic, or the H/O router doesn't do manual port forwarding

Edited by McHaggis69 (Wed 07-Oct-20 11:11:56)

In reply to a post by McHaggis69:

I even put 192.168.1.199 into a DMZ and still port scanning tools report everything closed...

Do you have a public IP address? Check the WAN IP showing on the router, and the IP that this site shows for IPv4, and IPv6.

Yeah -

the online port scanners I've tried all recognise my public IPv4 address.
Also IPv6

now that second matter is something I don't know much about. Is there anything different I have to do with a dual IPv4 and IPv6 address?

Do you actually have anything open on that port number?

If you try grc.com and their Shields up against that port number, does that report Closed or Stealth? If it reports Stealth then it would seem the forwarding hasn't worked or the computer has a firewall blocking it, but if it reports 'Closed' it means it got to the port and the port responded with "I'm closed" so port forwarding is working.

Hope that helps.

What does you imac do with traffic on port 65299?

If I had incoming traffic on port 65299 I would forward it as port 80 to one of the devices on my network that has a web server.

I'm not sure if you've tried this, or if it'll work, but have you tried using a software port scanner rather than a website?

I used to use the one on the portforward website years ago, though I notice they charge for it these days. But I'm sure there is a free version that will work on the imac.