Localhost to be accessible via Internet

[Dashers]

Mobile broadband providers are crap for this sort of thing, they block all sorts. Largely due to IPv4 address exhaustion.

Depending on your router's capabilities, you may be able to run tools like tcpdump from the command line to sniff inbound packets. If you set that to capture packets on your service port you will be able to see if your ISP is blocking requests as you'll get at the very least TCP SYN packets. This will give you a definitive answer to whether your ISP is getting in the way.

If your service is available from other machines locally, you don't need to worry about address binding above in b0redom's post as it'll either be your loopback or your nic.

I'm not sure what VPNs allow you to host through their connections, you may have the same problem as mobile operators. Depending on your budget and the service you want to run you could look at a very cheap VPS and either host remotely, or use a SSH tunnel to broker connections.

[Bonebreaker777]

Ok, here's some specifics:



... reduced text ... sorry...

A few more details would help with troubleshooting a great deal. What OS is the server running? What's the application you're trying to expose? What's the model of the firewall etc.

Okay - according to the internet my public IP address is 12.123.123.123 (I've replaced some numbers, of course).

In the router I've disabled the firewall and port forwarded the following:

Service Source IP Port Range Local IP Local Port Protocol
'Name' -left blank- '8999' 'local IP' '8090' 'TCP'

And then I've tried to access it from outside type the following into the browser: http://12.123.123.123 :8999
It was thinking for quite a while but eventually displayed: This site can't be reached.

What OS is the server running? - Windows 10 Pro, firewall disabled
What's the application you're trying to expose? - Some sort of a monitoring service, using mySQL (can give the name too if you're interested)
What's the model of the firewall? - Both Windows firewall and the router firewall are turned off while testing the connections

If that STILL doesn't help, what happens if you attempt to telnet to the port from outside the firewall - ie in the above case:

telnet 30.40.50.60 8999

I should use Putty for this or just type it in the cmd from a machine outside the network?

[Bonebreaker777]

Mobile broadband providers are crap for this sort of thing, they block all sorts. Largely due to IPv4 address exhaustion.

Depending on your router's capabilities, you may be able to run tools like tcpdump from the command line to sniff inbound packets. If you set that to capture packets on your service port you will be able to see if your ISP is blocking requests as you'll get at the very least TCP SYN packets. This will give you a definitive answer to whether your ISP is getting in the way.

If your service is available from other machines locally, you don't need to worry about address binding above in b0redom's post as it'll either be your loopback or your nic.

I'm not sure what VPNs allow you to host through their connections, you may have the same problem as mobile operators. Depending on your budget and the service you want to run you could look at a very cheap VPS and either host remotely, or use a SSH tunnel to broker connections.

VPS is probably a no-go, if I understand the concept of a VPS correctly. The network must be physical and actual devices are connected and disconnected to and from the network. And we need to be able to demonstrate this.

[b0redom]

Okay - according to the internet my public IP address is 12.123.123.123 (I've replaced some numbers, of course).

In the router I've disabled the firewall and port forwarded the following:

Service Source IP Port Range Local IP Local Port Protocol
'Name' -left blank- '8999' 'local IP' '8090' 'TCP'

And then I've tried to access it from outside type the following into the browser: http://12.123.123.123 :8999
It was thinking for quite a while but eventually displayed: This site can't be reached.

What OS is the server running? - Windows 10 Pro, firewall disabled
What's the application you're trying to expose? - Some sort of a monitoring service, using mySQL (can give the name too if you're interested)
What's the model of the firewall? - Both Windows firewall and the router firewall are turned off while testing the connections

I should use Putty for this or just type it in the cmd from a machine outside the network?

If you have a Linux/OSX machine use that, otherwise you'll likely need to install telnet and run it from cmd. You might need to change the source IP to 0.0.0.0 or whatever the wildcard is on your firewall. Just to confirm it definitely works inside the firewall right?

Have you got any working services exposed through that router?

[Dashers]

VPS is probably a no-go, if I understand the concept of a VPS correctly. The network must be physical and actual devices are connected and disconnected to and from the network. And we need to be able to demonstrate this.

The VPS is hosted, yes it's virtual, but pretty much everything is on the Internet. Your local devices on your LAN can still be physically connected, you're just using the VPS as a tunnel broker on the Internet to essentially present your service from another place. It's almost exactly the same as a VPN, but you're not bridging or routing, you're tunnelling a single service.

Your requirement sounds a bit odd though. Smells a bit PCI-esq, which is business related. You should speak to your service provider about a dedicated IP address on your 3G connection and that will solve your problem. This will be something available to business users.

[BobF64]

I don't think anyone suggested it, but have you tried not redirecting the port and using the same external port as internal?

[Bonebreaker777]

Tested a lot of different option, finally settled with a SIM card with a public IP address. Too bad we couldn't find something simpler

Edit: so after a while I've managed to get a SIM card with a public IP address and the proper login details. However, I still can't forward any of the ports. Any ideas, please?