Trying to open / forward port 445 on AC87U with 3.0.0.4_378.50_0

[fletchni]

Hello,

I’m new to Asus, and therefore to Merlin, and I don’t truly know if this is a Merlin problem or a generi Asus problem, but I thought I’d start here, and hopefully some kind sole can help me!

Subject to all the warnings everyone is going to give me, I want to get access from the internet to my USB drives attached to the router, without using the AICloud (which works perfectly, but doesn’t give me the OS integration I would like).

While I’m not a command-line person, I do believe I know what I’m doing; I had configured my previous router (an Apple Airport Extreme) to forward incoming port 447 to port 445 of the routher’s IP address. (Apple always blocked port 445 on the WAN, but I could always forward another WAN port number to 445 on the LAN, including the USB drives attached to the router - and anyway, it’s supposed to be a touch more secure not to use 445 on the WAN side anyway.

So, I’ve tried the same with my new Asus, but to no avail: forward WAN port 447 to port 445 with the IP address 192.168.1.1. I’ve tried turning off all the extra functions (AICloud, Network Protection, UPNP, etc.) but it still won’t forward… i just get timeouts from any client I try.

Google has not thrown up any helpful responses either.

So, if anyone has any ideas on how to get around this, I’d be very grateful.

BTW, I can successfully forward WAN port 446 to LAN port 445 with the IP address of my Mac connected to the LAN, and it works perfectly. Just not to the router itself.

(I did wonder if it was using a different IP address than the standard 192.168.1.1, but I’m not really sure).

Thanks in advance,

Nic.

 

[Rankdropper84]

I do this all the time. What kind of device are you trying to use to access your disk from the wan?

 

[Rankdropper84]

Although you really should turn most of that stuff back on. Its not like you have to use AIcloud to access your network just because its on.

 

[Rankdropper84]

The easiest and safest way to access your shares from the wan would be to setup openvpn on your router. From there just connect to you VPN server and the syntax for samba is the same as it would be on the lan. Smb://192.168.1.1 If using android just download a samba app like "andsmb" and enter your ddns name as the hostname. Thats a rough run down. At the very least please don't use FTP for anything other than local transfers

 

[fletchni]

Thank you very much for all your replies so far.

I do this all the time. What kind of device are you trying to use to access your disk from the wan?

OK... but how do you port forward? From which external port to which internal port (although i guess the internal port must be 445). I attach a copy of my port forwarding log.

To answer your question, I have tried with Mac OS X Finder (smb://mydomain.noip.me:446), Windows file explorer (\\mydomain.noip.me:446), and an iOS app called File Browser (where one can specify the port number in the config).

All three of these methods work beautifully when inside the LAN.

The easiest and safest way to access your shares from the wan would be to setup openvpn on your router. From there just connect to you VPN server and the syntax for samba is the same as it would be on the lan. Smb://192.168.1.1 If using android just download a samba app like "andsmb" and enter your ddns name as the hostname. Thats a rough run down. At the very least please don't use FTP for anything other than local transfers

I have actually tried this... but only on my Mac (with Tunnelblick as the client), and I got incredibly slow speeds. I mean really slow (I have 100 Mb/s upload at home and tried on an external network with 25 Mb/s download). I haven't tried yet on iOS or Windows (do you or anyone else recommend a good OpenVPN client for Windows?).

Although you really should turn most of that stuff back on. Its not like you have to use AIcloud to access your network just because its on.

You're right... and I have! And it works a treat (i.e. incredibly fast). But I'd still like to be able to use Finder (Mac) or Windows file explorer. I just mentioned it as things I did to try and isolate why it's not working for me. (I also promise I won't use FTP!).

And finally, I know it can't be my ISP because only a few days before I changed routers I could forward with exactly the same port numbers.

Thanks again for any help!?

 

[Rankdropper84]

Thank you very much for all your replies so far.



OK... but how do you port forward? From which external port to which internal port (although i guess the internal port must be 445). I attach a copy of my port forwarding log.

To answer your question, I have tried with Mac OS X Finder (smb://mydomain.noip.me:446), Windows file explorer (\\mydomain.noip.me:446), and an iOS app called File Browser (where one can specify the port number in the config).

All three of these methods work beautifully when inside the LAN.



I have actually tried this... but only on my Mac (with Tunnelblick as the client), and I got incredibly slow speeds. I mean really slow (I have 100 Mb/s upload at home and tried on an external network with 25 Mb/s download). I haven't tried yet on iOS or Windows (do you or anyone else recommend a good OpenVPN client for Windows?).



You're right... and I have! And it works a treat (i.e. incredibly fast). But I'd still like to be able to use Finder (Mac) or Windows file explorer. I just mentioned it as things I did to try and isolate why it's not working for me. (I also promise I won't use FTP!).

And finally, I know it can't be my ISP because only a few days before I changed routers I could forward with exactly the same port numbers.

Thanks again for any help!?

The speeds you are getting are a result of using smb and the fact that the CPU in these routers, while nice, are still just a dual core 800mhz cpu. As for using OpenVPN I don't know if I can help. I just use the openvpn app that you can download, but that might not work for you since I have already paid for there "private tunnel" service.

I use FTP all the time while I am inside my own network since it has a way lower amount of overhead compared to smb. I just would definitely not use it outside your lan because FTP broadcasts your username and password in plain text. In most cases though you should be fine using it while inside your lan. Give it a try and your speeds will definitely increase. Inside my network while downloading or uploading files to my USB 3.0 HD using FTP I get a range from low 40 MB/s to almost 50MB/s.

What were your speeds when accessing your storage from the wan? Roughly 400KB/s? You have to remember the WAN is a completely different animal compared to your personal network. There is some tips/tricks i know that can help, but usually to a small degree. I will post them up later

 

[fletchni]

Thanks for your replies... they are helpful.

To my Original Question: What settings to you use to port forward / open port 445? As I said above I have previously forwarded port 446 external to port 445 internal (and it's working now to a Mac on my internal network), but not to the AC87U itself.

As for OpenVPN... yes, I've actually got it working really well... I discovered that the speed issue was using Apple's Finder (which is reading all the Apple Double file information. If I use my Windows VM with File Explorer to connect, it is blazingly fast over the VPN.

I'd love to be able to get SSHFS working, but I suspect it needs something extra on the router firmware.

Finally, as for FTP, I have not succeeded with this. Not because I can't connect or that it isn't fast (or even FTPFS)... but there is something (that I can't figure out) with my existing hard drives that is preventing the FTP server from opening certain directories. It's not the length, I can't find a pattern with the file names (i.e. the only non-standard characters are: &, ., -, _, (, ), and space).

It's a real shame, because I feel like I'm so near, yet so far (and I won't start a topic on this thread about my USB 3 port)!

Thanks for your help,

Nic.