Glo Port forwarding needed in order to sync Glo: can anyone help?

[oj829]

It seems pretty obvious now that the reason my new Glo won't sync down books is because I have security settings on my home WiFi router that prevent it. I see from my router packet traffic logs that it is dropping outbound packets from my Glo to a remote host on port 8443 (8447? Can't remember now.)

My Touch does not have this problem. I have only established the simplest of port-forwarding rules on my router, and then only to do - well, never mind

Obviously, my Glo allocates a different address for itself behind the NAT every time I fire it up, so I confess to just being stymied as to how to configure a port forwarding rule that will (I guess) detect the outbound request, and trigger the opening of port or ports just back to that host (rather than everthing I have NATted).

Apologies in advance because I know this is stupid, but I've in fact never successfully gotten port forwarding to work for me without following rote recommendations.

Any help appreciated.... I'm going to write Kobo, also, who I already put a trouble ticket in with...

[oj829]

Originally Posted by oj829

It seems pretty obvious now

Hm... In the time it took me to write that, my Glo battery went from 60% to 58% with WiFi on and four books downloading.

[filmo]

Don't have a glow but notice my KT battery level goes down than expected while down loading with wifi and after download stops and wifi is off battery level rises to what I would expect.

[filmo]

Don't have a glow but notice my KT battery level goes down faster than expected while down loading with wifi and after download stops and wifi is off battery level rises to what I would expect.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by oj829

It seems pretty obvious now that the reason my new Glo won't sync down books is because I have security settings on my home WiFi router that prevent it. I see from my router packet traffic logs that it is dropping outbound packets from my Glo to a remote host on port 8443 (8447? Can't remember now.)

My Touch does not have this problem. I have only established the simplest of port-forwarding rules on my router, and then only to do - well, never mind

Obviously, my Glo allocates a different address for itself behind the NAT every time I fire it up, so I confess to just being stymied as to how to configure a port forwarding rule that will (I guess) detect the outbound request, and trigger the opening of port or ports just back to that host (rather than everthing I have NATted).

Apologies in advance because I know this is stupid, but I've in fact never successfully gotten port forwarding to work for me without following rote recommendations.

Any help appreciated.... I'm going to write Kobo, also, who I already put a trouble ticket in with...

I'm a bit surprised that the two devices are working differently. But there is a solution.

On your router, you should be able to reserve an IP address for the Glo. The MAC address of the Glo is used when doing this. Then you can do the port forwarding to that address.

[kobokobe]

I am by no means an expert in this area, but when you reserve a static IP address on your router, do you not have to manually assign that static IP address on the device itself?

[davidfor]

Not on any router I've used. What you are doing is telling the DHCP server in the router to give a chosen IP address to a particular MAC address.

What I do is to connect the device/computer and let it get an IP address. Then I logon to the router and look at the DHCP leases. The list usually has the IP address, MAC address and the time remaining for the lease. I find the entry one for the device I am interested in and copy the IP and MAC addresses. Then I enter these in the reservation settings of the router. From then on, when the device requests a IP address, it gets the same one.

[echwel]

Originally Posted by oj829

It seems pretty obvious now that the reason my new Glo won't sync down books is because I have security settings on my home WiFi router that prevent it. I see from my router packet traffic logs that it is dropping outbound packets from my Glo to a remote host on port 8443 (8447? Can't remember now.)

My Touch does not have this problem. I have only established the simplest of port-forwarding rules on my router, and then only to do - well, never mind

I don't understand why neither the touch nor the glo should need forwarding rules in a home-wifi-router. They are not accessed from outside your network, they are accessing the outside internet themselve!? Port-forwarding is used when accessing a device from outside a NAT-network. When the device is accessing the internet it just should get all the answers it needs. Kobo, for example, needs to set forwarding rules for it's servers, if they are on a NAT-network (which te probably aren't :-) ).

Maybe you set the internal firewall of your router to strict, stopping ALL internet traffic to some (or all) IP-adresses, unless they specifically are opened up again. In that case, it seems logical that a device on one IP-adress has more or less difficulty accessing the internet than an other device on an other IP-adress. Re-configurate the firewall in that case. To my opinion that has nothing to do with port-forwarding, more with port-closing...

[oj829]

Originally Posted by echwel

I don't understand why neither the touch nor the glo should need forwarding rules in a home-wifi-router. They are not accessed from outside your network, they are accessing the outside internet themselve!?

Well, all I can say is that my router logs showed that, upon initiating a sync, _outbound_ packets from the IP address assigned the Glo were being dropped for lack of an explicit rule (or "service enabled", as they say in Westell 327 language).

Port-forwarding is used when accessing a device from outside a NAT-network.

Yes, all my WiFi toys draw their IP addresses form a pool of NATted addresses: 192.168.1.something-thru-something. (I'm not home now).

Maybe you set the internal firewall of your router to strict, stopping ALL internet traffic to some (or all) IP-adresses, unless they specifically are opened up again.

I haven't shut everything down, but close.

If it means I miss the occasional dancing kitty, so be it.

In that case, it seems logical that a device on one IP-adress has more or less difficulty accessing the internet than an other device on an other IP-adress. Re-configurate the firewall in that case. To my opinion that has nothing to do with port-forwarding, more with port-closing...

Well, two points here: One is that syncing my Glo just up and worked about 24 hours ago. No idea why. I wonder if a mystery device somewhere had woken up and managed to claim the same address?

As for the way Westell allows users to do things, I have three choices:

1) allow Westell to run a maximum security setup

2) allow Westell to run a minimum security setup

3) Run "intermediate": the Westell allows only a small set of default permissions that should get an average user going (http, DNS, etc.), and everything else is either user-selected from a predefined list of "services" (email ports, AOL ports, popular game ports), or the user has to "roll their own" service. All this fun gets called "Port Forwarding" by westell, so I have adopted their language, which may be somewhat imprecise.

[echwel]

Originally Posted by oj829

Well, all I can say is that my router logs showed that, upon initiating a sync, _outbound_ packets from the IP address assigned the Glo were being dropped for lack of an explicit rule (or "service enabled", as they say in Westell 327 language).

If 'everything' is blocked, apparently a rule is missing to let a specific port go thru.

Originally Posted by oj829

Well, two points here: One is that syncing my Glo just up and worked about 24 hours ago. No idea why. I wonder if a mystery device somewhere had woken up and managed to claim the same address?

Certainly! My homerouter allows me to see the attached devices, and even, as Dafidfor stated earlier in the tread, to link an internal IP-adress to a specific device, or better, to link a specific device to the same IP-adress every time it is connected, so that, if you specified some rules for that adress, they apply everytime.

[oj829]

Originally Posted by echwel

Certainly! My homerouter allows me to see the attached devices, and even, as Dafidfor stated earlier in the tread, to link an internal IP-adress to a specific device, or better, to link a specific device to the same IP-adress every time it is connected, so that, if you specified some rules for that adress, they apply everytime.

My desktops all have fixed IP addresses, which was simple enough to do, and I'd like to follow D's suggestion, but at the moment, I see no way to reserve an address for a wireless device based on the wireless device's MAC address (again, this is a Westell 327) . I'll see what I can do, however. It could be useful, since there are definitely some port-forwarding rules which I WANT to be device specific (rather than dynamic).

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by oj829

My desktops all have fixed IP addresses, which was simple enough to do, and I'd like to follow D's suggestion, but at the moment, I see no way to reserve an address for a wireless device based on the wireless device's MAC address (again, this is a Westell 327) . I'll see what I can do, however. It could be useful, since there are definitely some port-forwarding rules which I WANT to be device specific (rather than dynamic).

I just had a look at the manual and I can't see anything for doing DHCP reservations. The closest I can see is the DNS configuration. It is possible setting up a host there will reserve the IP, but I don't know. But it wouldn't work for my Touch as that doesn't seem to have a host name.

[echwel]

Originally Posted by oj829

My desktops all have fixed IP addresses, which was simple enough to do, and I'd like to follow D's suggestion, but at the moment, I see no way to reserve an address for a wireless device based on the wireless device's MAC address (again, this is a Westell 327) . I'll see what I can do, however. It could be useful, since there are definitely some port-forwarding rules which I WANT to be device specific (rather than dynamic).

Isn't it possible to enter a fixed IP-adress in the Kobo (device not present with me at the moment, so can't check)?