BT Smart Hub 2. Can't get Port Forwarding To Work

[RayPooley]

I have today unplugged my ASUS DSL-AC68U router which was fully configured for all devices and port forwarding with everything working fine. This includes a host of web applications running under IIS webserver on a Windows 11 PC accessible through third party DNS service provider DynDNS. 

I have installed the BT Smarthub 2 in its place and added all of my devices.

Updated my DynDNS host names with the new external IP address of my Windows PC.

The host names are pingable from the internet.

The DynDNS server is registered on my BT hub and has the Service Status set to "Connected".

The DynDNS host names are listed under the "Hosts supported" section.

The Firewall Port Forwarding configuration lists the DynDNS host names and internal/external ports using TCP protocol. These port numbers match the port numbers defined in the IIS Basic Settings for each web application.

I am assuming that Port Forwarding is enabled by default. I cannot find any place in the Hub Manager that allows me to switch it on and off.

I am also wondering about the port numbers.

I am using ports in the range of 80 to 250 (with a few exception) for the port numbers in IIS.

The worked fine with the ASUS router.

As of now my DynDNS host names are failing to connect.

I have tried disabling the Windows Firewall on the PC but that didn't fix the problem. 

What am I missing here?

Cheers 

Ray Pooley

[Manatarms84]

Port Forwarding is not something I have done myself however the BT website has a handy section on it which may be helpful:

How do I set up port forwarding on my BT Hub? | BT Help

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[TimCurtis]

@RayPooley 

The only reason to switch from the ultra reliable DSL-AC68U would be a switch to digital voice.

Is this the case then it's not that difficult to use the SH2 just for DV and the Asus for everything else as before.

Message 5 in this thread shows how and the only other thing you need to do on the Asus is define a port as being the "WAN" port - typically port 4.

I didn't do it quite like that with my AC68U but that should work fine.

[RayPooley]

That was in fact why I made the switch.

I have been notified that BT will be doing an upgrade to digital voice so I figured I would temporarily install the BT standard router before they get to it and then figure out how to go back to the ASUS after the fact.

But I figured out a solution.

I had to add an Incoming rule to the Windows Defender Firewall to allow the virtual ports I had assigned in the port forwarding rules in the BT hub.

This was puzzling since the port forwarding rules worked fine with the ASUS hub.

So everything works now.

Thanks for your input.

[bobpullen]

@RayPooley - just a thought, but when you swapped the routers out, the Windows machine didn't default the network connection back to 'public' did it? I've seen this happen in the past and it could well lead to the symptoms you've described.

[RayPooley]

Possibly.

I didn't dig that deeply into it.

All I know is that the only change to the network was the hub.

My expectation was to just configure the BT hub as per the ASUS and be back in order.

That didn't happen.