Slink and ShareTool upnp

[edsyl]

I had been using these tools a lot with my old xyzel router. Everything worked fine.
Now with the 66 I keep getting the error that thte router cannot be configured through upnp.

My network is a trio of Airport extremes creating one wireless network , one as the base and the other two extending the network. The base hooks into the 66u.The 66u cretes another 5ghz network as well.

I suspect that for some reason the configure messages are not getting to the 66u as I never see any rule reuests on the syslog.
I am looking for some ideas to fix this as I use these tools for remote access while on the road. Can omeone confirm that the port reconfigration throug upnp or NAT-PMP functions correctly on .108 firmware?

Any other ideas?
Thanks
Ed

 

[RMerlin]

I had been using these tools a lot with my old xyzel router. Everything worked fine.
Now with the 66 I keep getting the error that thte router cannot be configured through upnp.

My network is a trio of Airport extremes creating one wireless network , one as the base and the other two extending the network. The base hooks into the 66u.The 66u cretes another 5ghz network as well.

I suspect that for some reason the configure messages are not getting to the 66u as I never see any rule reuests on the syslog.
I am looking for some ideas to fix this as I use these tools for remote access while on the road. Can omeone confirm that the port reconfigration throug upnp or NAT-PMP functions correctly on .108 firmware?

Any other ideas?
Thanks
Ed

Works for me, with uTorrent forwarding its port on Windows 7. But I've seen a few people report similar issues. Try resetting to factory defaults (it helped for some users).

 

[edsyl]

same here, Transmission can map it automatically as well.

However it seems like slink and sharetool cannot. I find it strange that two independent programs have the same issue.

If I may be so bold to ask, should I give your firmware a go?
Is it significatly better than 108 I am using?
No disrespect intended, just want your opinion here.
thenaks
ed

 

[RMerlin]

same here, Transmission can map it automatically as well.

However it seems like slink and sharetool cannot. I find it strange that two independent programs have the same issue.

If I may be so bold to ask, should I give your firmware a go?
Is it significatly better than 108 I am using?
No disrespect intended, just want your opinion here.
thenaks
ed

My firmware is essentially an improved version of Asus's firmware. See the list of changes in the first post in the thread. Personally I think it's an improvement, since I'm not taking away anything from Asus's original firmware.

It probably won't solve your issue however, unless Asus had fixed it for build 144 (on which my firmware is based). You could also try Asus's 3.0.0.3.151 beta if you want to see if Asus fixed your issue.

 

[edsyl]

My firmware is essentially an improved version of Asus's firmware. See the list of changes in the first post in the thread. Personally I think it's an improvement, since I'm not taking away anything from Asus's original firmware.

It probably won't solve your issue however, unless Asus had fixed it for build 144 (on which my firmware is based). You could also try Asus's 3.0.0.3.151 beta if you want to see if Asus fixed your issue.

OK, fair enough.
I downloaded and installed.
Once installed there were a lot of log entries about JFFS formats and new kernel versions.
I reformatted and rebooted.
Now that I have done that can I revert back to older versions?

Once installed my FTP NAS server can be located and logged into but constantly times out. I did create a port forward and I did disable the SAMBA and FTP share as well. No luck. I need my FTP to work properly so that will be forcing me to revert(if possible) to the older version I had.
Question for you is that my NAS also has a DDNS feature and I have enabled that as well as on the router itself. Do I need both or could that cause a conflict as well? I don't know. I will try turning off the NAS DDNS. Update, no change. Any ideas?


I also had issues with specifying my own DNS servers, instead of the default ISP ones. It just would not take at all. For a while I could not access the internet whatsoever until I did a factory reset and started over.

Thanks
Ed

 

[RMerlin]

OK, fair enough.
I downloaded and installed.
Once installed there were a lot of log entries about JFFS formats and new kernel versions.
I reformatted and rebooted.
Now that I have done that can I revert back to older versions?

Not a problem. It's usually recommended to restore to factory defaults whenever downgrading any firmware, but that might not be necessary.

Once installed my FTP NAS server can be located and logged into but constantly times out. I did create a port forward and I did disable the SAMBA and FTP share as well. No luck. I need my FTP to work properly so that will be forcing me to revert(if possible) to the older version I had.

Don't forget to forward both 20 and 21. Also see if it makes any difference if you switch between port and passive mode on your FTP client. Otherwise, I can't think of any reason why the FTP connection would time out unless you idle a lot.
You might also need to forward an additional range of ports if you are using passive FTP.

Question for you is that my NAS also has a DDNS feature and I have enabled that as well as on the router itself. Do I need both or could that cause a conflict as well? I don't know. I will try turning off the NAS DDNS. Update, no change. Any ideas?

Only enable the DDNS client from one location, otherwise you might be issuing multiple unnecessary updates. Some DDNS proividers frown on that, and might disable your account due to abuse. I recommend using the one in the router, since it will immediately update whenever the IP changes, while the NAS probably only checks at regular intervals.

After you enable it on the router, check its system log for any ddns update logging. Note that it probably won't update the ddns entry if it was already up-to-date.

I also had issues with specifying my own DNS servers, instead of the default ISP ones. It just would not take at all. For a while I could not access the internet whatsoever until I did a factory reset and started over.

That's odd. I haven't used alternate DNS entries on my RT-N66U, so I don't know if it's an issue with Asus's firmware or just something that was bogus in your nvram (which was resolved by the factory default reset).

 

[edsyl]

Don't forget to forward both 20 and 21. Also see if it makes any difference if you switch between port and passive mode on your FTP client. Otherwise, I can't think of any reason why the FTP connection would time out unless you idle a lot.
You might also need to forward an additional range of ports if you are using passive FTP.


Why both?
My NAS FTP uses port 21. It was working fine before.
If I don't use the router FTP facility this should not cause any issues, correct?
It just says connected and just sits there for some reason unknown to me.
This is very puzzling to me.

I am more worried about the number of 'lock ups' I have seen where I just cannot simply access the internet at all even though the router says I am connected. Repeated resetting of the adapter does not help. It just looks like for whatever reason to the PCs that there is no internet access?
Any ideas?

 

[edsyl]

OK, so now this is becoming more of an irritant.
I have a NAS at a specified IP address connected directly to the router.
Nothing I have been able to try has allowed me to access the ftp server at IP_address: port of the NAS.
When I enable the firewall to pass through ftp traffic to port 21, the rest of the network loses IP connectivity. Why, I do not know. Disabling it brings it back. So something for some reason when I enable the white list for ftp to the NAS IP kills everything. weird, weird, weird. Did I say weird.
Other routers I have to have a port forward and a firewall rule. Heaven knows what this thing requires. This should be as easy as falling off a log.
Any ideas at this point?

As an aside, I never, ever had this level of just putrid firmware with any ZyXEL product, ever. I just cannot believe how bad this support really is.
Nothing is intuitive, weird bizarre wordings, and the web GUI from hell to top it off.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[RMerlin]

Go ahead and try Tomato then - it might be more to your liking.

I agree that some things in Asuswrt aren't very intuitive. Part of it seems to come from the fact that the English strings are probably written by Taiwanese people rather than native English speakers. Sometimes the wording is awkward, even for a non-native speaker like myself. That is fairly frequent with Asus products unfortunately - the wording in some versions of their motherboard BIOS is plain wrong at times.

 

[edsyl]

Go ahead and try Tomato then - it might be more to your liking.

I agree that some things in Asuswrt aren't very intuitive. Part of it seems to come from the fact that the English strings are probably written by Taiwanese people rather than native English speakers. Sometimes the wording is awkward, even for a non-native speaker like myself. That is fairly frequent with Asus products unfortunately - the wording in some versions of their motherboard BIOS is plain wrong at times.

I wanted to thank you for your replies and efforts here.

From what I gather DD-WRT will be a non-starter until the release of a mainline 64K nvram has been incorporated into its development flow?

I did hook up Wireshark to the different MACs and PCS hooked into the network, and noticed that ALL nat-pmp remap requests are seen, but REFUSED. Why I do not know. It seems to me that nat-pmp just is not working, where upnp request will work fine. I can do an nvram show, but can I then grep nat-pmp to see the relevant lines in the nvram settings?
Do you know what the nat-pmp options might be? Where would I find this out for this router?


Again, thanks.
Ed

 

[RMerlin]

I would avoid DD-WRT until the nvram fix, yes.

I'm surprised at the PNP issue. This is miniupnpd's config here:

admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# more /etc/upnp/config
ext_ifname=eth0
listening_ip=192.168.10.1/255.255.255.0
port=0
enable_upnp=yes
enable_natpmp=yes
secure_mode=yes
upnp_forward_chain=FUPNP
upnp_nat_chain=VUPNP
notify_interval=60
system_uptime=yes

clean_ruleset_interval=600
clean_ruleset_threshold=20
presentation_url=http://192.168.10.1
uuid=e021f9f1-3f6c-48f3-b2ef-16de173ad14b

allow 1024-65535 192.168.10.1/255.255.255.0 1024-65535

deny 0-65535 0.0.0.0/0 0-65535

 

[edsyl]

I would avoid DD-WRT until the nvram fix, yes.

I'm surprised at the PNP issue. This is miniupnpd's config here:

admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# more /etc/upnp/config
ext_ifname=eth0
listening_ip=192.168.10.1/255.255.255.0
port=0
enable_upnp=yes
enable_natpmp=yes
secure_mode=yes
upnp_forward_chain=FUPNP
upnp_nat_chain=VUPNP
notify_interval=60
system_uptime=yes

clean_ruleset_interval=600
clean_ruleset_threshold=20
presentation_url=http://192.168.10.1
uuid=e021f9f1-3f6c-48f3-b2ef-16de173ad14b

allow 1024-65535 192.168.10.1/255.255.255.0 1024-65535

deny 0-65535 0.0.0.0/0 0-65535

Yes it IS surprising that the router outright refuses the requests to map.
I can send you the traces, it is quite clear.
Do you know what each of those config lines do?
Is there a setting that would force the nat-pmp into reject mode?

 

[RMerlin]

No idea. You can search online for more documentation on miniupnpd, the daemon Asus uses.