Westell Verizon DSL router/modem port forwarding issue

dostarr

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Sep 3, 2009
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Hello everyone, so I have been having difficulties with my Verizon DSL router/modem and port forwarding.
Router/modem: Westell A90-750015-07
Revision: W
OS: Microsoft Vista Ultimate 64
AMD Phenom X2 Black 720
8 GB mushkin 1600mHz ram
2x Ati radeon 4870

Software-based security systems:
Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Windows Firewall and Verizon's built in router/modem firewall

Skip to Summary: below to skip my procedure if you don't feel like reading everything. I simply wanted to offer an in-depth elaboration of my exact process of thinking to assist in troubleshooting.

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish
I have made many attempts to port forward my router for random video games, including League of Legends, MMO's, First person shooters etc etc etc.. pretty much all game types. I also use programs for VPN's etc which require certain ports to be able to send/receive data.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it only half works. I have a set static ip set by my modem so that I don't run into an issues with re-assigned ips it is set as: 192.168.1.18
Now, my first attempts after realizing there was a problem were to follow the manual online for my particular router step by step (I have much experience in networking, and at first did not attempt this until I realized my way wasn't working)
I followed it step by step never missing a single detail. Yet when I connect to League of Legends (for example) I get certain warning messages everytime at the beginning of my games that say something along the lines of "pvp.net (the host) was unable to make a connection to your computer would you like to try again" so I click retry and bam it works.. This happens 95% of the time, the other 5% I don't get the message and its smooth sailing (WITH NO MODIFICATIONS, THIS IS JUST INCONSISTENT) So, I decided to take another approach to isolate the problem.

I went in, disabled my ad-aware, spybot, windows defender and tried again, still same issue. So I kept them disabled, and went ahead and disabled my firewall, still same issue. So I left all of that disabled and went into the router/modem itself and disabled the internet firewall, a direct quote for my setting is "No Security (None) - all traffic is allowed" With this I went in extremely confident it would work and my attempts were to no avail. I am completely lost as to what I can do to solve this problem I went through Verizon's tech support and they wanted to charge me like $15 just to talk to me without any real guarantee or money returns for failure. Now I am just a college student and as such I am broke. This was out of the question.



Summary: Disabled all firewalls, including my router/modems firewall completely to allow inbound/outbound traffic, and disabled all software-related security measures on my computer, including windows defender, ad-aware, and spybot. Despite these measures I am still running into connection issues where the games/etc. tell me I am unable to connect and when I click retry they work. It is a mild inconvenience for those programs, however vpn (virtual private network) and hosting games is completely out of the question and NEVER works.


EDIT: I went ahead and made a global exception rule that opens all ports both inbound and outbound from 1-65535 for both tcp/udp while leaving everything disabled and still nothing. I simply did this as a test to help diagnose and will be removing it immediately.
Thanks in advance for reading this ridiculously long post in the hopes of assisting me =]
 

sk1939

Distinguished
You just completely opened youself up for an attack from the outside with no security, and probably have about atleast 1/2 dozen viruses by now, no joke.

As far as whats happeneing it sounds like your connection is timing out. Try one of these two things for me here:

Go to www.speedtest.net and run a speed test to a location near you.
Then go to www.pingtest.net and do a ping test.

Post both of those results and we'll move forward.