RT-AC68U DDNS can not access remotely with router firewall enabled.

[rageagainstjg]

Hello all, first post here so hopefully not breaking any rules. I have a RT-AC68U that is running 3.1.1.4.378_4585 firmware, this originally was one of the t-mobile routers that I flashed as soon as I got it. My problem is that I have setup ddns using the hostname.asuscomm.com and I can access this on a computer outside of my local network but only if i go into the router and first turn off the router firewall from a computer located on the network. If the router firewall is turned on i can not access my router remotely, if the router firewall is turned off I can access it remotely. Do you know of a setting that I should change on my routers firewall in order to access it remotely? My eventual goal is to do some port forwarding but first I want to be able to just access my router remotely without having to turn off it's firewall. With the firewall turned on this is what is says,
Settings have been updated. Web page will now refresh.
Changes have been made to the IP address or port number. You will now be disconnected from TM-AC1900.
To access the settings of TM-AC1900, reconnect to the wireless network and use the updated IP address and port number. It keeps saying TM-AC1900 because of it originally being a t-mobile router. If I turn off the firewall everything works just fine.

 

[rageagainstjg]

Thank you to all that tried to help me, after talking with asus my issue was that I needed to turn on "enable web access from wan" that for some reason was off by default. This can be located under adminstrator tools/system. Here is a pic. http://imgur.com/7WIJR67 Now I just have go in my browser and enter hostname.asuscomm.com:8080 and i am good.

 

[RMerlin]

Thank you to all that tried to help me, after talking with asus my issue was that I needed to turn on "enable web access from wan" that for some reason was off by default.

No router out there will expose their web interface on the WAN by default, as it's a serious security risk. The mini web server used by those routers are nowhere as hardened security-wise as something like Apache or Nginx.

I don't recommend enabling this, it's much safer to configure a VPN instead for those few cases where you might need to remotely access a router.

 

[rageagainstjg]

Hey, I am really glad you responded to because if I couldn't get it to work, i was going to switch over to your firmware. My real goal was to able to access some software that I had on a computer, basically couchpotato and Sonarr, I really didn't and care about seeing the router outside of my local network just figured if I could first see it that would be a step in the right direction. Then once I could see the router I wanted to do some port forwarding for the Sonarr port and couchpotato ports. How would you recommend that I set this up? Would this be a safe choice? http://www.htpcguides.com/configure-sonarr-reverse-proxy-nginx-windows/ if I did that would you know what I would need to do? I guess I would still enable web access from wan, but turn off the port 8080/just not enter in anything, is that right? And then just do port forwarding as said in that link? Would that be a safer alternative? My end goal is to able to see and manage Sonarr and Couchpotate from a remote computer safely, easily and without a lot of extra programs running an old slow computer that I am running coachpotato, plex, sonarr and other stuff on.

Edit: I got some help and was told that I can turn off the enable web access form wan and that the port forwarding would still work. Just wanted to edit this incase somebody runs across this in the future. Also will look into the reverse proxy deal to further tighten my internet security.