RT-AC66U open port limitations? Pingdom shows offline

[cluney]

Hi,

I have RT-AC66U running torrent 24/7 from network PC's. I have a pingdom.com free account to check network uptime (I am on wireless ISP and like to keep an eye on them).

I used to have a cheap router and it worked 110% fine (sic) in exact same application... torrent 24/7 and pingdom monitoring connection uptime and CORRECTLY showing when I'm offline due to ISP troubles.

Since I started using the RT-AC66U pingdom pretty much (99.9%) always report me as offline which is not true. Strangely when I log in to router admin interface then pingdom would pop up saying I'm online again. I tried pingdom settings on http and https accounts (https effectively logging into my router as admin user.... I did not bother with user accounts etc for the test). This changed nothing... still showed offline mostly.

Is there any setting or tweak I can try to get proper responses back to/from pindom to show that I am online? FYI pingdom periodically check my WAN IP presence from randomly 40+ odd servers worldwide. At the same time I also travel a fair bit in the world and I never have an issue to open the router admin page while travelling internationally (even with the 24/7 torrents). So its strange that the router seem to ignore the Pingdom http requests but respond to my 'random' location requests?

I'd really appreciate any advice - in my mind it seems as if the router does not have enough open connections to accept the Pindom checks (and I'm not torrenting crazily - about 2-3 torrents with 50 connections max (say 200 connections combined) I guess.

I'm a fan of Merlin's firmware... so I'm running Merlin 3.0.0.4.374.36_beta1 ofcourse. (You are the best!)

Ty kindly,
N

 

[RMerlin]

No idea how their service works, but in case they use ICMP PING, did you enable "Respond to Ping" on the Firewall page?

 

[cluney]

Yes ... Respond to Ping is active but makes no difference (their service is more focussed to check webpages available rather than just active IP on www). From their FAQ page ... The HTTP check is performed by a single GET request (the check does not fetch any dynamic content); that is the HTML code and header on your website (no images, flash, JavaScript etc).

So in my mind ... when they 'check' my IP with the GET request they should have access to the web-interface login screen....so my IP *should* show active.

As said before - strange that when I login to my router setup pages then I get shown "online" ... sometimes even for long after I logged out.

PS. The Firewall and DoS is active ~ I don't know how they work but I guess packets will be let through provided they don't seem to be disruptive to my connection?

But my cheap router before also had firewalls etc enabled and that worked just amazingly fine.

PS:
Enable Web Access from WAN : Yes
Only allow specific IP : No

Thanks,
N

 

[RMerlin]

PS:
Enable Web Access from WAN : Yes
Only allow specific IP : No

If their service works by accessing your router's web admin, then their IP might possibly be getting blacklisted by the firmware due to numerous connection attempts with incorrect login credentials.

What you could try instead that might be more reliable (and far more secure than allowing the whole world to access your router's web interface - who knows what security holes still lie in this proprietary httpd daemon) would be to enable AiCloud, and have the service check the AiCloud webui instead (port 8082 or 8443 depending on whether you check HTTP or HTTPS). AiCloud will only blacklist usernames with too many failed login attempts rather than the whole IP.

 

[cluney]

Thanks - I will try AiCloud option. Nice thinking!

I managed to get Pingdom connection to 8082 (can't connect on 8443) so provided all remain stable it could be working. Need to test a few hours.

On router I configured to update dnsomatic.com which in turn update no-ip.com and Pingdom is then checking on no-ip.com Weird way of doing this but seems that is the accepted way to do it.

I will update after testing.

Thanks again!
N

 

[cluney]

OK, some 12 hours+ and 100% up time reported from Pingdom so it seems the AiCloud option works although I think there is still some issue in that I need to provide my admin router login on Pingdom in order for the tests to be successful (and I don't like that). I see no way of creating 'users' for the AiCloud without full router admin access?

I see the core problem is firewall related. If I disable the firewall and let Pingdom access AiCloud direct (even without the need for dnsomatic.com + no-ip.com) then the checks work fine. {Firewall : Enable the firewall to protect your local area network against attacks from hackers. The firewall filters the incoming and outgoing packets based on the filter rules..... but there is no rules defined - just default options. I guess I can try to add the 50 odd servers IP's at IPv6 Firewall / Inbound Firewall Rules ... but it does not make sense ... why can my PC from any world location access the router and Pingdom can not without having their IP's added?}

If I were to open a webpage, say www.google.com Broadly speaking there is no authentication transactions etc. that can possibly cause my accessing IP to be blocked or blacklisted.

Similarly... assuming my router is at http://123.123.123.123 it should just open the admin login page requesting credentials and that should satisfy the http GET from Pingdom to validate the page exist - there would be no authenticating attempts in the "online check" unless I provided login details and https port from the Pingdom setup.

On the AC66U I see the login page is actually some kind of popup "Authentication required. The server at http://...... requires username and password. The server says RT-AC66U". I can't right click or get properties of this popup.

So it seems as if this popup is probably not recognized or is not responding as a valid webpage and that is perhaps what is different between my previous cheap router and the Asus now. Strange that when I am logged into the router admin interface THEN the Pingdom checks somehow get the proper GET responses. What difference should it be whether I am logged in or logged out of the interface? Same apply for AiCloud - I need to provide valid login detail (admin credentials) before the Pingdom checks becomes successful.


ANYWAY... I confuse myself! I think at end of the day I probably just need to run a webserver on the router hosting a silly little 'hello world' page. I have read before that it is possible and in recent firmware I believe the scripting is even easier to achieve this - the initial descriptions was over my head - easier just to buy a cheap router again lol

No need to reply ~ I have learned a bit and been confused a lot ~ at least my results I wanted to obtain was achieved to have Pingdom work properly albeit in some work around ways.

Thanks,
N

 

[RMerlin]

OK, some 12 hours+ and 100% up time reported from Pingdom so it seems the AiCloud option works although I think there is still some issue in that I need to provide my admin router login on Pingdom in order for the tests to be successful (and I don't like that). I see no way of creating 'users' for the AiCloud without full router admin access?

Why would they need to log in? All they need to do is to be able to load the login page - no username/password needed for that. AiCloud doesn't use HTTP Auth unlike your router's web interface, so it should work fine without the need for them to log in.

out of the interface? Same apply for AiCloud - I need to provide valid login detail (admin credentials) before the Pingdom checks becomes successful.

If that's really the case, then their verification mechanism is totally screwed up. Look at something more standard such as Internet Vista IMHO.