Unable to port forward even with Giga Hub in PPPoE

[marble]

I have been stuck trying to open the port 27015 (more specifically, ports 27000 to 27050) for a couple of days now. Every solution that is available online has not worked for me. I chalked it up to the Giga Hub being unable to port forward and went a bought another router, TP-Link Archer C80, and connected it to the Giga Hub and put it in PPPoE mode to handle port forwarding in the router. At this point the port is still closed and I'm out of ideas on what to do, even with my firewall disabled the port does not go though and I can't identify where the point of failure would be. Any help is appreciated.

[Vanadiel · Accepted solution]

Try 1 port at a time. Don't need PPPOE to forward ports, but you do need to forward them to the correct device and use the correct protocol.

[marble]

The reason I'm using PPPOE is because I've exhausted every method I can think of to get the ports open on the Giga Hub. I have tried opening one port at time, factory resetting, updating to latest firmware, enabling ADMZ, disabling UPnP, etc. I am certain that the device and protocol are correct as I am trying to host a game server on my desktop which uses both TCP and UDP and I am able to connect to the game server on LAN.

I have even used a second laptop I own to host another server on port 21060, which actually worked the first time, then I changed the port to 27015 where it broke, and changed it back to 21060, which no longer works anymore. This doesn't make sense as nothing else changed.

[Vanadiel]

Are you using a port checker to verify if the port is open or closed? canyouseeme.org is an often used one.

[RCNBob]

Over the last few years, there have been a ton of questions on this Forum and Reddit regarding Port Forwarding on the Bell Gigahub.

I have not found a solution, but I want to provide a summary of the things I've tried over the last week that didn't work and, more importantly, the responses from Bell.

In my instance, I'm using a third-party router (Asus) because my Gigahub is in the basement and can't push enough wireless bandwidth to my main floor for my application. This adds a layer of complexity but ultimately does not change the outcome.

For the record, I’ve done Port Forwarding on other ISPs in the past. Total time investment is typically about 3 minutes. Go into the router GUI, open the Port, save settings. Done. I've run hardware consisting of multiple Access points, AIMeshes, etc. I'm no Network Engineer, but I'm not tech-illiterate either.

Attempt 1: Setup up the Asus router as an access point, let the Gigahub do Port Management.

Outcome: Fail. I have found no Port Forwarding or DMZ setup on the Gigahub that will cause the ports to open.

Attempt 2: Setup up PPPoE/Bridge Mode on the Gigahub, manage the ports via the Asus router.

Outcome: Fail. The Asus router was completely unable to establish an internet connection.

Attempt 3: Set up ADMZ to grant my ASUS router, or just my PC, unrestricted internet access.

Outcome: Fail. No ports open.

Attempt 4 (Desperation): Leave both in router mode, and try opening the ports on both devices.

Outcome: Fail. It was a long shot, but nothing that should have been working was working, so…

To the Bell response:

I tried multiple calls with Bell, and got the following responses:

The first was: “This isn’t our problem. Call your third-party router manufacturer”. I attempted to address this logically, and eventually got the completely illogical answer: “Yes, we want you to call Asus for them to provide you with technical support for the Bell Gigahub.”

The second was much more succinct: “We don’t offer support on any of the features you’re accessing”. Basically, once you can log into your router you’re on your own. I went so far as to ask: “Is Bell company policy that you will not provide technical support for Bell software features on a Bell piece of hardware?”. The answer: “Yes, that is correct”.

So I called customer loyalty and told them that being able to access these features was a deal-breaker for my service. If I can't set this up, the service is not meeting my needs and has no value to me. Surely this would put me through to a level of tech support that can solve this perfectly solvable problem? Nope. The threat of losing the account changes nothing.

I’d love to have somebody from Bell show up here and contradict me, but there you have it. If you have a Gigahub, it seems that Port Forwarding just isn’t an option for you.

[RCNBob]

I have finally found the final answer for this problem, and confirmed it with Bell (Not that the average person on their phone support has a deep understanding of their own network architecture - this was a hard answer to get out of them).

The Bell fiber network runs on CGNAT topology. It is physically impossible to do Port Forwarding the way they provision their residential services. Port Forwarding with Bell fiber requires you to upgrade to a business account and subscribe to the Static Public IP feature. I was quoted a (deeply discounted) rate of $129 per month for a 1.5gb connection, $125 installation charge, first 3 months free, 1 year contract.

[Klobber]

I’m in the exact same boat trying to setup a 3rd party router with Bell and having no luck port forwarding. A lot of my IoT devices can’t use the ports they need to and my NTP time server isn’t even working on the network. Have you had better luck with the static IP route?

[Vanadiel]

I am not sure why you need to open ports for IOT devices, or for other devices?

I have many devices on my own network, they all run fine.

But of more importance is how you verify the port is open. Bell does not allow servers to run on their residential services. Port forwarding will only "work" if the request originated from within your network, and some ports are blocked by default.

While for example port 80 is used for HTTP traffic, setting up a web server at port 80 will not work no matter what because the request has to originate from within your network which it will not do when using a server.