Unable To Forward Any Ports On Friend's Internet Connection

[Veazer]

My friend needed help setting up port forwarding on her parent's internet connection for Skype and torrents. I'm very familiar with port forwarding configuration but it seems only a few ports are actually open to incoming traffic on her connection. I have tried many different random ports and none worked.

I am testing the port forwarding using the µtorrent test server. You can test port forwarding by using the format:

http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=### where ### is the port you wish to test.

I tried forwarding a few standard ports to her pc to see what would happen and found that I can forward 80 (http), 21 (ftp) and 23 (ssh) but they don't actually work for torrents and those shouldn't really be used anyway.

Is this standard to block ports at the ISP like this?

[monty]

You'll need to give a bit more info!

What router is used, what internet connection (ISP/package), did you assign a static IP to the computer etc...

Some ISP's do block certain ports, but mainly just trying to curb P2P downloading on the cheap "home" packages.

[jsat]

I tried forwarding a few standard ports to her pc to see what would happen and found that I can forward 80 (http), 21 (ftp) and 23 (ssh) but they don't actually work for torrents and those shouldn't really be used anyway.

Is this standard to block ports at the ISP like this?

ssh is on port 22 but not to mind as most torrent applications will work on these ports you have listed and will show "green" on your tests. If your one does not consider google your friend and find another torrent client to use i.e. utorrent

[Veazer]

You'll need to give a bit more info!

What router is used, what internet connection (ISP/package), did you assign a static IP to the computer etc...

Some ISP's do block certain ports, but mainly just trying to curb P2P downloading on the cheap "home" packages.

Not sure what particular model the router is, just a typical dlink. Not too important though, like i said i'm familiar with port forwarding regardless of brand or model, i just can't get it working on her connection.

The MAC address for her machine is statically mapped to 192.168.1.111 in DHCP and the virtual server port forwarding is of course mapped to that IP.

I'm not sure what internet package she's on, her folks are gone and she didn't know. I try to do reverse dns next time i'm over if you think knowing the provider will help

ssh is on port 22 but not to mind as most torrent applications will work on these ports you have listed and will show "green" on your tests. If your one does not consider google your friend and find another torrent client to use i.e. utorrent

Sorry, that was a typo on my part. While the port forwarding test i mentioned above does give a success message / green light for a couple of ports, it never works in µtorrent at all. What's even stranger is that I can choose a massive seeded torrent and get almost zero throughput, on a port that the test said should be working properly, and on top of that web browsing dies almost completely until i stop attempting to use torrents on those ports. A few moments after closing utorrent completely web browsing is usable.

[Wolfie]

I've found on my machine at home that the uTorrent 'test' shows my ports as not being open, but im still able to connect and download at full speed and i get a green icon on the utorrent client. Doesn't seem to matter what i do regarding ports on the firewall and router - all of these online tests show my ports as being closed. Which is obviously not the case otherwise i wouldn't be able to do anything except view Web Pages, FTP and Email (the standard ports)

Anyone know why these ports are showing as closed in the online port tests?

[jsat]

What's even stranger is that I can choose a massive seeded torrent and get almost zero throughput, on a port that the test said should be working properly, and on top of that web browsing dies almost completely until i stop attempting to use torrents on those ports. A few moments after closing utorrent completely web browsing is usable.

From the symptoms you give it would simply suggest to me you have no bandwidth or it is being used by the torrent client to the max, but with little or no peers as you say, and no web browsing, I would stick with 'no or very small bandwidth'. You should be able to check this on your router and see exactly what the connection to the dslam is and what your antt / error rate is etc.

[Veazer]

From the symptoms you give it would simply suggest to me you have no bandwidth⁽¹⁾ or it is being used by the torrent client to the max⁽²⁾, but with little or no peers as you say⁽³⁾, and no web browsing, I would stick with 'no or very small bandwidth'. You should be able to check this on your router and see exactly what the connection to the dslam is and what your antt / error rate is etc.

(1) Nope, plenty of bandwidth available. I'm getting 600-750 average for speedtest.net servers in LA.

(2) Nope, the download speed is only 1-2 kBps in utorrent, if anything.

(3) Plenty of seeders and peers available, but few are able to connect. I deliberately chose a very popular torrent so i could see the maximum potential of her connection.

I shouldn't have stated that web browsing is totally dead, but it's essentially unusable. Even a simple graphics free page like the utorrent port forwarding test pages take ages to load or times out. BTW, encryption is enabled on the utorrent client to help reduce the odds that the isp will interfere.

The modem reports that the dslam connection is 1024/192. Here's a little more info for the port forwarding, maybe i've been overconfident in my abilities

The modem's internal ip is 192.168.1.1, and this modem has a built in switch/hub (not sure which). The router is statically mapped to 192.168.1.10 on the modem's subnet. There is one other non-wireless comp connected to another ethernet port on the modem and it is statically mapped to 192.168.1.20. I have therefore setup port forwarding on the modem to forward port XXX to 192.168.1.10, the wifi router. i assumed i cannot directly forward to the destination ip, 192.168.0.111, because these are non-routable subnet addresses. Is that correct?

The router's internal ip is 192.168.0.1, and on the router I have configured port forwarding to forward port XXX to 192.168.0.111, the client PC we intend to use utorrent on.

[lomatopo]

The modem reports that the dslam connection is 1024/192.

Looks like a bad DSL line, the upstream rate being the give-away; talk to the ISP to trouble-shoot the line. Did this line ever work properly? Could be a provisioning issue, but more likely just a crappy line. Maybe someone tapped/bridged into it recently?

In the modem's management software you need to forward the current local IP address of the PC (192.168.1.nnn) to a specific port. For uTorrent I use 44605.

Also would help if you described your network topology? Sounds like you have multiple devices (modem, router)?

[Veazer]

The modem reports that the dslam connection is 1024/192.

Looks like a bad DSL line, the upstream rate being the give-away; talk to the ISP to trouble-shoot the line. Did this line ever work properly? Could be a provisioning issue, but more likely just a crappy line. Maybe someone tapped/bridged into it recently?

In the modem's management software you need to forward the current local IP address of the PC (192.168.1.nnn) to a specific port. For uTorrent I use 44605.

Also would help if you described your network topology? Sounds like you have multiple devices (modem, router)?

If the modem indicates that the connection is 1024/192, why does that that necessarily indicate a problem? i assumed that was the package they are using (though i haven't heard of package with those values)... And the connection works fine for all other purposes, fast downloads and reasonable uploads given the link speed. Skype, voip, etc. all work flawlessly as well. I will check SNR values though just to see how the line is.

You see in my previous post that i have forwarded the port in the modem to the PC (i arbitrarily chose 876), though indirectly because i had to forward to the router first and then setup forwarding in the router as well. Normally this wouldn't be needed but because there's a hub in use on the modem itself i need to do so in this case.

I'll do a quick topology map when i get back later, i'm headed out the door now...

Thanks for everyone's input.

[monty]

though indirectly because i had to forward to the router first

Bit strange. From where did you forward to the router?

Normally hubs don't come into play in your network topology. The above sounds more like you have an adsl modem, followed by a separate router!

[Veazer]

though indirectly because i had to forward to the router first

Bit strange. From where did you forward to the router?

Normally hubs don't come into play in your network topology. The above sounds more like you have an adsl modem, followed by a separate router!

Precisely. They've got a modem with 4 ethernet ports (hence the hub/switch reference), and the wifi router is plugged into one of those ports.

I checked it briefly again before we went out for dinner and ran some diagnostics on the dsl line. It has horrid SNR ratios, so lomatopo was spot-on correct about the bad dsl line. it was constantly connecting and disconnecting tonight, usually connecting at 1024/160. It's nearly dead center of Chiang Mai, so i don't think it could be a distance issue.

[stumonster]

get the phone line replaced from the house to the street - have you had some heavy rain recently up there ?