TR Forums

Hi all,
I'm posting here feeling rather humbled.. I'm the sole I.T manager a large organisation..
And I can't man my own damn Netgear router!

I have a Netgear WNR3500.
It is hooked up to a Linksys modem running in bridged mode.

For a long time I have had issues getting any ports opened on the firewall. I was able to run a minecraft server, and I FTP access to my NAS is working, too. Anything else? Not a chance. In fact, the other day I decided to run an MC server once more, and it worked for 1 day, but now the port is closed and I can't get it open again.

What's worse is that I'm now discovering that these ports aren't even open between local clients.
Since tinkering with the router, for example, I now can't find my computer using bonjour (which cripples a few apps on my iPad), and I can't telnet anything to anything, from anything. It's just becoming a mess!

But given this is a fairly basic, consumer router, there's not much in the way of options for fixing this.
Does anyone know where I could start? I think I will restore to factory defaults and start again, in a minute.

Thank you,
Rhys

Ok, update..

Restored my router to default, and just setup the most basic settings.
Added FTP ports to point to my NAS - now it's working fine both external and internal.
Added 25565 to point to my PC - not working external OR internal. I've turned off Windows Firewall. In fact, if I try to join myself by entering the local IP (192.168.1.52) it won't connect - "connect: refusal", it will only join if I enter localhost.

This suggests the issue relates to my PC, where could I start here?
I do recall trying my MacBook too which does not have any firewall software installed, and having a similar result, though.

Sounds to me like the firewall on the router may be hosed. I think that you should start with a fresh router by restoring the factory defaults like you said.

However, I think an even better idea is to install a third party firmware such as dd-wrt. This will get you all the features on your consumer class device.

I considered DD-WRT, but WNR 3500 v1 is not supported =(

Not to derail the thread or anything, I'm sure there is an actual fix to your problem , but in my experience if you have problems with home networking now you will continue to have problems with it at 4 month intervals for the rest of your waking years. Consumer stuff is designed to be easy, and it ends up running head-long in the opposite direction. A competent person like yourself with the right tools can configure everything just right so that it will work all the time. Replacing problem equipment with something that's designed specifically for get-out-of-my-way (e.g. an RT-N16 w/TomatoUSB) will probably make your life easier. My 0.2p

Thanks Mastax - you're right, and I decided to get a Billion 7800N on my friends recommendation. It looked perfect for my needs.

So, I've just set it up and Internet is working.
And, well.. same problem.

I can connect to my FTP server, no problem, after adding the FTP port rule.

I've tried to run a Minecraft server on both my Windows AND Mac (neither of which had any firewall software switched on)..
They can connect to localhost, but they can't on their own IP address, each others IP address, or my external IP address.

I can't telnet either on the port. And this is all local!

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Your software firewall on your PC has locked down all the ports.

FWIW, the WNR3500 is marketed as an opensource router with support from Netgear on creating new firmwares.

http://www.myopenrouter.com/

You can put DD-WRT, Tomato, etc on there without any issues and will provide you with better tools with which to configure your router.

I had this router, but ended up having issues with it. Not exactly the same but sometimes, the XBox 360 would just stop seeing the SSID and xfers to the PS3 were dog slow no matter what I did.

Corrado wrote:

FWIW, the WNR3500 is marketed as an opensource router with support from Netgear on creating new firmwares.

I considered DD-WRT, but WNR 3500 v1 is not supported =(

I think you missed this part. I have the same router and ran into the same issue on the v1 3500. Feel free to extrapolate on your comment further if it can in fact support DD-WRT, as I'd like to try it out on mine.

Walkintarget wrote:

I think you missed this part. I have the same router and ran into the same issue on the v1 3500. Feel free to extrapolate on your comment further if it can in fact support DD-WRT, as I'd like to try it out on mine.

I did miss that.

Corrado wrote:

I did miss that.

Heh, and you got my hopes up for some obscure workaround that was recently discovered.

Yeah, I have a WNDR3500_L_ and love it...but when I came in this thread and saw that the OP had a non-L I knew he was pretty much SOL.