US Telco Support > Verizon > Verizon Fiber Optics > Problem with port forwarding on secondary router...

Problem with port forwarding on secondary router...

It's very rarely a good idea to have two routers that are port forwarding to one another.

You are usually setting yourself up for trouble. The DMZ is the way to go.

The westell will sometimes give you an error, most of the time it's a false negative, so just hit ok, and test it anyways. if it works then everything was just fine.

»www.pcwintech.com/common-problem···rwarding

reply to lolwatpear
I have a 9100em sitting at 192.168.1.1 it's connected LAN to WAN to a Netgear wnd3700 at address 192.168.30.1. It in turn is connected LAN to WAN to a Dlink dir655 at address 192.168.3.1. Wireless is turned on on all devices. Have no issues port forwarding from the outside to any of the subnets.
Basically all you have to do is to define each of the lower routers as a fixed address on the parent subnet E.G. have the Netgear at 192.168.1.254 then add a port forward rule at the Westell for anythinge destined to a lower subnet to be routed to 192.168.1.254 port xxx. Then at the lower subnet either route the port to the lower router or to the IP address of the listening device.

reply to lolwatpear
i've tried absolutely everything at this point. the only thing the made port forwarding work was actually connecting my main computer to the westell and not the e2500. this isn't too bad of a solution, but no other device can port forward on my network, but my computer. i'll explain what I did. I don't understand why it wouldn't work:

1. changed the e2500 static ip to 192.168.1.5 (wasn't really changed, but i enabled it, linksys set it up automatically)
2. I went under dmz in my westell and entered 192.168.1.5
3. changed my main computer's static ip to 192.168.0.9
4. went to portforwarding settings in the e2500 and added port 6891 to static ip 192.168.0.9
5. I test it with an online port tester and it's closed.
6. At this point I disable various things, one at a time, testing to see if it will fix the problem. I disable the firewalls, upnp on both routers, etc. I even add the port with static ip to the westell, and nothing.

what could possibly be the problem?

I have an Apple Time Capsule and Actiontec router set up in the same way, with my router in the DMZ. Something I noticed is that even if the port is forwarded, it does not seem to work from within the internal network unless i also forward the port specifically in the Actiontec. For example, I have a web server on port 80. If I forward the port on my router, from outside of my network, let's say from a neighbor's house, I'm able to access the server. If I'm in the local network, I cannot access that web server unless I type in the IP of the server, or go into the Actiontec UI and specifically tell it to forward port 80 to my Apple router.

reply to lolwatpear

quote:

---

References to the Actiontec router apply to all models of the Actiontec and to the Westell 9100EM, unless specified otherwise

---

Let me give a recommendation. It will help eliminate the possibility that you may not be PF correctly.

So give your Linksys it's own static. 192.168.1.200 or .50 (stay away from the .100 range if you have FiOS tv. The set top boxes use .100

Then erase your pf rules in the linksys.

Go to the actiontec and add the linksys to your dmz.
Go to the actiontec and kill any PF rules associated with what you are doing

Download simpleportforwarding.com tool and let it do the PF rules for you.

It's free and will configure it all correctly the first time.

Then try your applications again and see if you're still getting a problem.

Thanks for the advice, but this tool didn't do anything different then what i've done. it's a great tool that i'll use in the future if i can figure this out. ill show you some pics to see if it can help:

1. »imageshack.us/f/221/deluge.jpg/

port i'm trying to forward.

2. »imageshack.us/f/341/routerstaticip.jpg/

here's the static IP I made for my e2500.

3. »imageshack.us/f/526/dmz.jpg/

dmz'd it on westell and removed all pfing rules.

4. »imageshack.us/f/713/computerstaticip.jpg/

created static ip for computer.

5. »imageshack.us/f/33/portforwardi.jpg/

used port forwarding tool to set up ports (not any different then what I did manually).

6. »imageshack.us/f/705/portchecker.jpg/

still closed.

Ok, so you opened the ports on the router.

are both sides open and active and listening, and did you add the PF rules to your PC as well in the windows firewall or whatever other third party firewall?

i already tried turning off the windows firewall and it made no difference. what do you mean "both sides open and active and listening"? I also tried opening the ports on the westell even with dmz enabled and nothing happened.

the port immediately opens when I directly connect my Ethernet to my westell due to the westell's upnp. that's the only thing that has worked.

If you are doing the option #3 Lan to Lan, then you only need to port forward on the main/first router. Disable the port forwarding rules on the second router.
It works. I have a couple wireless IP cameras using the wireless N on the second router.

Actiontec main router, and NetGear second router here.

it's lan (westell) to wan (linksys)

reply to lolwatpear
here's an update: I ended up disabling dhcp on my secondary router, which may have been the problem. I port forwarded to the port in deluge and it is open. I was happy, but then i wanted to make sure it was working by forwarding other ports.

So I did, and the problem is that literally the only port i can open, the one that is in deluge. for instance, the deluge port is 56789. If i copy those exact setting but change it to say 56789 (or anything for that matter), port checkers will say it's closed. Why would this be the case?