Can't port forward "standard" ports on BT Smart Hub 2?

[michthom]

I can successfully forward ports via my Smart Hub 2 provided I pick external ports that are not "standard".

E.g. this rule works:

		External ports		Internal ports
Rule name	Device name	Start	End	Start	End	Protocol
HTTPS	Synology	49165	49165	49165	49165	TCP

However if I change *only* the External port (start and end) to either 443 or 8443, the connection via the SmartHub fails. I can still connect to the internal target on 49165, so this seems to be purely a SmartHub quirk?

Similarly I have a rule for HTTP which works:

		External ports		Internal ports
Rule name	Device name	Start	End	Start	End	Protocol
HTTP	Synology	49167	49167	49167	49167	TCP

But again if I change *only* the external port start and end to either 80 or 8080, it fails.

What I want is to make a connection from my phone when out and about to my home automation system and other internal services. To do this I've got the following setup, which used to work just fine with an OpenWRT router in the past. Having upgraded to the Halo3+ service with the EE Mobile fallback, I'm hoping to keep the SmartHub 2 this time.

• DDNS domain is kept updated with our current public IP address by the Synology NAS (Docker container running DuckDNS)
• iPhone connects to https://[internal-service].[my-ddns-domain], which is resolved by DuckDNS to our IP
• Router forwards the connection from external port 443 to internal port 49165 on the Synology NAS (no significance to the port number, I just picked a one for NginX to listen for HTTPS connections)
• NginX completes the connection (with a LetsEncrypt certificate issued for the specific subdomain [internal-service].[my-ddns-domain]), and based on the [internal-service] forwards the connection internally to the corresponding target device on my network.

As a workaround, I can specify the port number in the connection (https://[internal-service].[my-ddns-domain]:49165 but I was hoping to keep the URLs tidy and I can't see why the SmartHub would differentiate one external port from another?

Am I missing something? Even the examples hint at being able to forward port 80, but so far I can't make that work at all.

Cheers

Mike T

[Cueca]

Mike,
i have no idea but i am also having problems. i just moved to BT form SKY and had a port open so i could access my CCTV. i am trying to open the same port in BT ands cant get it to work. port number 37777... no idea how to resolve it

[michthom]

In my case I now have an engineer visit booked, as the online chat folks agreee this was odd. I’ll update after Wednesday.

In your case I can’t really comment without more info. Are you happy to share your configuration?

I struggled with the inbuilt DHCP server in the SmartHub 2, eventually I gave up and used another device on my LAN as the DHCP server. I’ve no idea if your target device is given a static address but if not I’d make really sure it’s got the address you’re forwarding to (and that it keeps that address!)

I don’t mean to sound patronising as I don’t know  what you do/don’t know or have configured already!

Best of luck

Mike

[michthom · Accepted solution]

Well, I'm baffled. The engineer came today and we agreed it wasn't hardware or connection related, and he didn't find anything wrong with the setup. He reset the SmartHub by sticking a pin in the back, but (oddly) it didn't return to factory settings (for which I'm quite grateful). We then tried adding a new rule on port 443 (which was blocked because one existed) so we deleted and then re-added it and... it started working??
I'm afraid I can't explain why - the only reasonable hypothesis is that I'd got the original rule wrong somehow - but I've no idea where, as I had checked it a few times.
So I can't offer much useful advice to anyone else, other than to make really REALLY sure that the only thing typed into the port fields are precisely the numbers you expect and not something weird like a leading "space" or more digits than fit in the field e.g. pasting on the end of a previous value and pushing that prefix out of sight like 8049167 or 44349165 in my case?