Alright. I’ve worked my way through most of what I can do so far. I’m having issues with my ISP. Since I live in an apartment complex that has a tech ammenity (my internet in included in rent) the ISP’s techs tell me “no ports are closed” or “we don’t close any ports.” I got to a open port tool like “you get signal” and it tells me that 28967 is still closed. At this point my ISP tells me I’m going to need a pass through address. They also told me if I hooked up my own router then I could forward that port myself through my own router.
So…I’m stuck. I don’t think adding my own router and setting port forward will change anything if the port on my isp is still closed. Any help or recommendations y’all can give would be greatly appreciated. I’ve reached a road block. Is it possible the port is open and the open port tool is wrong? Is the tech at my isp right about adding my own router? Help!
Oh and they also said I could get my own “personal” residential service installed? wtf?
I do not know your ISP. However, if you use a router instead of directly connecting your server to the internet, then you have to forward the port to your server.
Usually routers have this function, but it could be that the one provided by your ISP doesn’t. It could also be that the ISP does not want to teach you how to forward the port just because either the tech does not know how to do it or because “teaching a customer how to use advanced functions” is not considered part of the service.
Yougetsignal and similar sites cannot test to see if your ISP is blocking anything. They can test if whatever port is accessible, but this means that they test the entire chain:
“Internet -> ISP -> your router -> your firewall -> the process”
You forgot to forward a port? Port “closed”
You forgot to allow it in your firewall? Port “closed”
The service (be it the node or something else) is not running? Port “closed”
There is no real way* to test whether your ISP is blocking, unless you are absolutely sure that:
You have forwarded the port correctly (correct protocol, for Storj it’s TCP, correct internal IP)
If there is a firewall running on the server, that it allows connections to that protocol/port combination.
The node (or whatever) service is actually running and listening on that port.
*well, there is a way to test that by sniffing packets on the router’s WAN port, but I have not seen a cheap router that has such capability.
Another reason could be that you have CGN (carrier-grade NAT), this can be checked by seeing of the WAN address of the router is a public IP or RFC1918 one (10.x.x.x 172.16-31.x.x 192.168.x.x). In this case you would need help from the ISP to forward the port (and the ISP will probably tell you to pay for a public IP).
blocking ports can also be interpreted in multiple ways.
outgoing ports can also be blocked and thus the isp could have meant they don’t block any of the outgoing ports, which is what most people use… and then some UPNP type deal to open ports for incoming traffic happens on a temporary basis and fully automated.
which makes most stuff work, and more secure than all ports open…
but i digress
the passthrough address is the ip address that is most likely standard procedure for the isp to suggest that as the whole noip dns type setup can cause a lot of configuration issues, so they just want to keep it simple.
if you can get your own ip the you should also be able to open a port… its just a matter of where you do that… so i would start by getting a global ip address and then take it from there…
i mean you can always just switch to getting your own residential service… but the real question is if thats required…
also when speaking to isp support… forget the support… they are just reading from pre written scripts… you want to speak to a technician, the people that actually fix the problems, that will usually do wonders for making progress in figuring out what the issues is…
but sounds like miscommunication to me, nobody has all ingoing ports open per default… that would be insane on the internet today.