Port Forwarding Question

[ArashiNoOuji]

Hi I'm not sure if this is the right sub to ask this on I'm sorry if it's not,

 

So I'm trying to port forward ftp which is 21 and I did all the port forwarding on my router and allowed it on my firewall but it still says connection refused 

and I searched around and came across this program SPI port forward and I tried it, and suddenly my port forward worked, I was wonder why is that,

I don't really want to use a program every time I need to use the port, why did it work right after using SPI port forward

 

I'm sorry if this is the wrong sub for this question, and thank you in advance 

[badreg]

Are you running an FTP server on the address that it is being forwarded to?

[LIGISTX]

What are you trying to open a port to? I would really advise against opening ports to a windows machine as they are not exactly the most secure things in the world, and you wouldn't believe how many failed login attempts I get on my server when I have port 22 (ssh/sftp) open and forwarded to it. I use RSA keys to log in, so im not terribly worried as that shouldn't be exploitable (everything is exploitable if someone tries hard enough.......) but I rarely leave the port open for more than a short time and have decent security in place.

 

If its an option, I would recommend you set up a VPN, even one as simple as buying a ~40 dollar raspberry pi and setting it up on that, plenty of tutorials online and its super simple!

[ArashiNoOuji]

27 minutes ago, badreg said:

Are you running an FTP server on the address that it is being forwarded to?

yes

[ArashiNoOuji]

15 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

What are you trying to open a port to? I would really advise against opening ports to a windows machine as they are not exactly the most secure things in the world, and you wouldn't believe how many failed login attempts I get on my server when I have port 22 (ssh/sftp) open and forwarded to it. I use RSA keys to log in, so im not terribly worried as that shouldn't be exploitable (everything is exploitable if someone tries hard enough.......) but I rarely leave the port open for more than a short time and have decent security in place.

 

If its an option, I would recommend you set up a VPN, even one as simple as buying a ~40 dollar raspberry pi and setting it up on that, plenty of tutorials online and its super simple!

well it's not mostly ftp / servers that is important, the ftp was just an example, I was just wondering why that's the case, why is it when I just port forward it on my router it doesn't work and when I use a software it works 

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, ArashiNoOuji said:

well it's not mostly ftp / servers that is important, the ftp was just an example, I was just wondering why that's the case, why is it when I just port forward it on my router it doesn't work and when I use a software it works 

Well I suppose it depends what client you are using. I would think no software is required, but what is the client? If its windows, does it have to be told what port to listen on and that is what that program is doing? I honestly don't know, I only ever use linux for such things... Never tried to FTP/SFTP/SSH anything like that to a windows box over WAN.

[badreg]

3 minutes ago, ArashiNoOuji said:

yes

Is the host listening on port 21? Run netstat and confirm that the port 21 is listening.

[ArashiNoOuji]

16 minutes ago, badreg said:

Is the host listening on port 21? Run netstat and confirm that the port 21 is listening.

I don't really get it but when I did netstat it doesn't show the port 21

 

[badreg]

8 minutes ago, ArashiNoOuji said:

I don't really get it but when I did netstat it doesn't show the port 21

 

Then your FTP server is either not running, or not listening on port 21. That is why you are getting "Connection refused".

[ArashiNoOuji]

1 minute ago, badreg said:

Then your FTP server is either not running, or not listening on port 21. That is why you are getting "Connection refused".

I'm so dumb, that's what it was, I didn't have it running and I tested the port, I thought I can test it without running it. thank you