Portforwarded Server refusing connection

[SilicateWielder]

Hello,

 

So this weekend I decided I wanted to learn how to host my own private Squirrelmail server, and while I did get the server online, and managed to portforward it after some technical difficulties I was unable to access it through my public IP. Thinking there was something I was missing or perhaps my ISP blocked port 80 I put the project aside to regroup and then proceeded set up a Plex media server, I've set Plex up before and was able to access it outside my home network through my public IP so I was confident enough in my ability to get it working. However, strangely enough, while Plex verifies that the server is publicly accessible; I cannot access it using my public IP either.

 

I was wondering if anyone here may know what's going on, and could help me figure out why I cannot access my forwarded ports, I understand that port 80 may be blocked but I do not understand why port 32400 would be. I'm running the Plex/Squirrelmail servers on Ubuntu 16.04LTS and my ISP is AT&T.

[Guest]

Give it some time to connect. Might take a while.

[SilicateWielder]

1 minute ago, Dutch-stoner said:

Give it some time to connect. Might take a while.

I did, Nasa contacted me saying there were either martians messing with the satellite dish again, or AT&T didn't care for space exploration. (I already made a peace agreement with the martians, although NASA doesn't know it yet)

[Guest]

If them martians aren't the problem, I would go and call the wonderfull AT&T support hotline.

 

On-topic: never used those two pieces of software. But blocking port 80... Seems to be a nasty move. Most ISP's in my country block port 25, which is messed up a bit, altough I do understand that. (lots of spam was send from the netherlands back then)

 

Can't you try different ports? Did you get/forward the correct local IP adress? Try different software which uses different ports, just to check things?

[SilicateWielder]

Just now, Dutch-stoner said:

If them martians aren't the problem, I would go and call the wonderfull AT&T support hotline.

 

On-topic: never used those two pieces of software. But blocking port 80... Seems to be a nasty move. Most ISP's in my country block port 25, which is messed up a bit, altough I do understand that. (lots of spam was send from the netherlands back then)

 

Can't you try different ports? Did you get/forward the correct local IP adress? Try different software which uses different ports, just to check things?

Yeah, it does suck that AT&T blocked port 80 but the unfortunate truth is that port 80 is often also abused so some ISPs do have the block that port in order to ensure network security or reduce spam.

 

I ensured that the correct IP address has been portforwarded, and even went looking around to see what others have done. I did hear that Plex users suddenly lost access outside of the network after a recent update but from my understanding that issue has been resolved. 

[Mikensan]

Some ISPs have begun NATing home users, meaning your public IP is shared. You would probably need to call them and verify how they hand out IP addresses. A few users on this forum have had this issue, especially over in europe (cell phone companies in the US already do this, some ISPs are starting to).

 

After starting plex, port forwarding and all that jazz, head over to https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2. Test the port using that site, you're looking for it to fail. If the port is not open then you are either behind a NAT at the ISP level, didn't properly port forward, or you have your IPv4 wrong (possibly changed since the last time you looked).

 

That test will not work if something is not actively listening for connections, so you need to start plex or whatever service you hope to test.

[ChalkChalkson]

Often times you cannot access your own public IP in general.

Also, as @Mikensan already pointed out, some ISPs are currently giving out IPv6 to their customers and group them into a single IPv4, this way you can use IPv4 when you browse the web, but your ISP doesn't need an IPv4 for each customer. This unfortunately screws with port forwards... When I had the same issue some time ago @Mikensan and I traced it back to that very thing. My ISP was "Kabel Deutschland".

[samiscool51]

43 minutes ago, ChalkChalkson said:

Often times you cannot access your own public IP in general.

yea, ISP's are dicks generally. they do this stuff to force us prosumers to upgrade to a more expansive plan that removes these restrictions...

if you live in australia the best ISP i know is optus, they don't do this sh*t and allow users to port-forward and use their public IP for whatever they want..

the only one i know of in the us that doesn't have these restrictions is google fiber, i don't live in the us but changing plans or using multiple plans is prob going to be more common their with ISP's being like this

i understand if you can't change due to it being to expensive or you having a contract with your current one

but always read the fine print as by law, they have to state what restrictions comes with your plan and what they allow and don't allow with your conection

[Guest]

2 hours ago, ChalkChalkson said:

Often times you cannot access your own public IP in general.

Also, as @Mikensan already pointed out, some ISPs are currently giving out IPv6 to their customers and group them into a single IPv4, this way you can use IPv4 when you browse the web, but your ISP doesn't need an IPv4 for each customer. This unfortunately screws with port forwards... When I had the same issue some time ago @Mikensan and I traced it back to that very thing. My ISP was "Kabel Deutschland".

With my previous ISP I could not acces my own public IP, with port 80 or 8080. But that was because the crappy modem. It had an internal webserver to controll them settings. And accessing my own public IP from my local network would log me into that modem.

 

When I switched ISP, I got an IPV6 IP. Wasn't happy. Called the ISP and told them they needed to give me an actual IPV4 IP adress. They were not happy, and had to consult some people. But they fixed it in the end. (I said I had ancient software which could not work with IPV6, so they changed it) I needed to get new old firmware, and everything has been fine ever since.

[ChalkChalkson]

On 6.6.2017 at 3:49 AM, Dutch-stoner said:

When I switched ISP, I got an IPV6 IP. Wasn't happy. Called the ISP and told them they needed to give me an actual IPV4 IP adress. They were not happy, and had to consult some people. But they fixed it in the end. (I said I had ancient software which could not work with IPV6, so they changed it) I needed to get new old firmware, and everything has been fine ever since.

When I called my ISP with that I tried to sound at least as pissed as I was, they switched it pretty quickly and after just one call transfer