Ports are closed even if forwarded

Aiden2k13 · Nov 7, 2014

Hi , I am using TP LINK WDR 3600 and I have forwarded some ports for games. Now I have assigned a IP address to my Xbox One and I have forwarded those ports on that IP . Now, when I am checking online to see if those ports are open or not , its showing those ports are closed on that IP.
Can anyone tell what I am doing wrong ?

Ijack · Nov 7, 2014

You are checking the IP address of your router rather than that of your Xbox?

Aiden2k13 · Nov 7, 2014

Ijack :

No. As I said , I assigned a Static IP to my Xbox and I forwarded ports on that static IP and after that I was checking whether those ports were open or not on that static IP , and they were closed.

rhysiam · Nov 7, 2014

You need two things for a port forward to show up from an external scan/connection attempt:

1) The port forwarding set up correctly on the router (which as you've described, sounds like it's working)
2) The device to which the ports are forwarded to, to be 'listening' on the ports (I think this is your problem)

I can set up a port forward from my router to my PC, but unless my PC is set up to listen on those ports, it will simply ignore the connection attempt and the device testing the port will get no response whatsoever. The device on the outside has no way of knowing whether the packets were dropped by the router (because #1 isn't working), or whether they were correctly forwarded but ignored by the device (because #2 isn't working). Either way it gets no response.

Do you have a windows 7 computer on the same network as your XBox? Open a command prompt and type:
telnet [ipaddress] [port]
IP address is your xbox address and port is one of the ports you opened. If you get a "connection refused" error, then you know it's XBox not listening on the ports your forwarded. If you get basically anything else (like a blank screen... you can type and press enter to have a little chat with the XBox...) then the XBox is listening on the port and you must have an issue with the port forward.

It's likely that the XBox only starts listening on the specific ports when the right game is loaded, or it's listening for connections, which may well not be all the time. I don't know a lot about how the XBox manages all that.

rhysiam · Nov 7, 2014

Aiden2k13 :

If you're checking externally to see if those ports are open, you need to connect to the IP address of your Router, NOT the static IP address you set up. That's how port forwarding works. Any traffic destined for the router (i.e. it's WAN IP) on the designated ports will be forwarded to the internal host you specify.

Aiden2k13 · Nov 7, 2014

rhysiam :

You need two things for a port forward to show up from an external scan/connection attempt:

1) The port forwarding set up correctly on the router (which as you've described, sounds like it's working)
2) The device to which the ports are forwarded to, to be 'listening' on the ports (I think this is your problem)

I can set up a port forward from my router to my PC, but unless my PC is set up to listen on those ports, it will simply ignore the connection attempt and the device testing the port will get no response whatsoever. The device on the outside has no way of knowing whether the packets were dropped by the router (because #1 isn't working), or whether they were correctly forwarded but ignored by the device (because #2 isn't working). Either way it gets no response.

Do you have a windows 7 computer on the same network as your XBox? Open a command prompt and type:
telnet [ipaddress] [port]
IP address is your xbox address and port is one of the ports you opened. If you get a "connection refused" error, then you know it's XBox not listening on the ports your forwarded. If you get basically anything else (like a blank screen... you can type and press enter to have a little chat with the XBox...) then the XBox is listening on the port and you must have an issue with the port forward.

It's likely that the XBox only starts listening on the specific ports when the right game is loaded, or it's listening for connections, which may well not be all the time. I don't know a lot about how the XBox manages all that.

I am on Win 8.1

Ijack · Nov 7, 2014

As has been said elsewhere, the only address that the outside world can see is that of the router. The address that you have assigned to the Xbox (it must be in one of the ranges 192.168.x.x, 176.16.x.x, or 10.x.x.x unless you have a very unusual ISP setup) is what is known as non-routable, which means that you cannot connectect to it from the outside world.

That is why you need port forwarding. The external computer contacts the router, specifying a port to connect to. The router then forwards that request to the Xbox's address.

Aiden2k13 · Nov 7, 2014

Ijack :

Then how do I test if a port has been successfully forwarded or not ? Any way to know ?

Ijack · Nov 7, 2014

You test the address of the router. As long as the server you are trying to access on the Xbox is running it will show that port as being open on the router. And when someone wants to connect to whatever server you are running on the Xbox it does so by accessing the router's IP address with the appropriate port.

Say you wanted to run a web server on the Xbox. You would then, on the router, forward port 80 to the IP address of the Xbox. Someone outside your network wanting to access that web server would put the address of the router in the address field on their browser. Then the router does it's magic and requests for a web page are forwarded to the Xbox by the router.

Hence the term "port forwarding"; that's exactly what happens.

Search

Ports are closed even if forwarded

Aiden2k13

Honorable

Ijack

Ijack

Splendid

Aiden2k13

Honorable

rhysiam

Splendid

rhysiam

Splendid

Aiden2k13

Honorable

Ijack

Splendid

Aiden2k13

Honorable

Ijack

Splendid

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page