Wireless router port opening

[stevem999]

Hi there, I have an Inexq wireless router and have been told I need to open a port to allow access to newsgroups because the internal router firewall is blocking access. I think it it port 118 and need to open it 'outgoing' only. I've been through all the options on the setup screens for my router and can't see anything to do with port opening. Can anyone help at all - I've seen somewhere that port opening is also called port forwarding, and my router also has Virtual Server & DMZ which may or may not be something to do with it - can anyone assist at all with the settings or what I'm looking for?

Thanks

[Angus]

I'd have thought it would be something to do with the virtual server settings - it is on my 3com.

DMZ opens everything up both ways if I remember correctly.

[Paul Adams]

Virutal server, DMZ and port forwarding sound like they are related to inbound connections, not outbound.

NNTP is port 119, btw.

I wouldn't have expected any settings to require altering on a broadband router for outbound connections, is there anything in the manual which mentions this?

[stevem999]

Paul/Angus, thanks for the hints - Paul, I agree that I wouldn't have thought I need to change anything however I'm 99.9% certain that it is the router causing the problem as there was nothing wrong before I installed it, also if I disable the hardware firewall within the router then the newsgroups work fine so it must be this - any more thoughts on what I should be looking for to change. As for manuals/instructions I made the mistake of going for a foreign brand with an 'iffy' manual (French Canadian) who's website turns out to be poor and I'm still waiting for a response from an e-mail enquiry to them! There's nothing explicit in the manual about opening ports etc - I assume some are open by default as the internet worked immediately after I installed it.

[Paul Adams]

I must admit I checked out the website first and was a little bemused by the "support" section having only one entry for the top model which said "testing" as the title and "testingtestingtestingtestingtestingtestingtestingtestingtesting" as the actual "help"!

Okay, then is there a section specifically for administering the firewall in the config area?
I would guess that ports 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS), 110 (POP3 - collecting mail) and 25 (SMTP - sending mail) are open by default and NNTP wasn't one of the predefined ones.

You've applied the ultimate troubleshooting technique by proving it works with the built-in firewall disabled, now just to figure out how to modify the rules for it!

[stevem999]

Thanks for the tip, I think I need to go and sit down and go through every single config screen I can find and see if there is anywhere to control ports. I'll let you know how I get on!

[Angus]

could you give us some print screens of the config suite??

[stevem999]

I can possibly do better than that as I have the manual in Acrobat format on my PC here, if I can upload it somewhere then you can see all the screen prints in there - how can I upload it somewhere? I don't think I can attach to messages because I'm a new user.

[stevem999]

Going to have a go at 3 screen dumps now to see what happens - the first two are the only pages in the manual that mention ports, the third has a sentence marked that seems pertinent to the problem. If you have ideas please let me know, if you need the full manual then let me know too!

See edit below - didn't work so let me know how I can get the manual to you - I feel as if you're getting close on this one!

[stevem999]

Bump!

Anyone able to assist by having a look at my manual or something - got a reply from the manufacturer who asked me to do a firmware update - did that but surprise surprise, it doesn't actually give you any more options/menus within the set-up screens.

Cheers