EBR-2310 port-forwarding problem

I am a new user of the D-Link EBR-2310 wired ethernet router. Overall it
seems quite good.

At first it seemed very unreliable: it would work, but then network
traffic would stop passing, and I would need to reboot it.

I had set up some `virtual servers' to forward incoming connections from
the Internet to specific TCP ports on machines inside on our LAN. I
noticed that it seemed that the router would stop working when a TCP
connection was made from inside our LAN to one of these virtual servers
at its external IP address.

Using the `port forwarding' part of the configuration instead of the
`virtual servers' seems to have fixed this. Now our internal users can't
cause a denial of service!

Of course, the `virtual servers' and `port forwarding' sections have
slightly different features, hence the distinction, but one can often
use one as a workaround for problems in the other.

So I mention this here in case:

(a) anyone can shed any light on this, or even give a `me too!'
(b) someone with the same problem googles and finds this workaround

Of course, it's still early days - I can't yet say it won't need more
reboots ...

Mark

Mark T.B. Carroll wrote:
> I am a new user of the D-Link EBR-2310 wired ethernet router. Overall it
> seems quite good.
>
> At first it seemed very unreliable: it would work, but then network
> traffic would stop passing, and I would need to reboot it.
>
> I had set up some `virtual servers' to forward incoming connections from
> the Internet to specific TCP ports on machines inside on our LAN. I
> noticed that it seemed that the router would stop working when a TCP
> connection was made from inside our LAN to one of these virtual servers
> at its external IP address.
>
> Using the `port forwarding' part of the configuration instead of the
> `virtual servers' seems to have fixed this. Now our internal users can't
> cause a denial of service!
>
> Of course, the `virtual servers' and `port forwarding' sections have
> slightly different features, hence the distinction, but one can often
> use one as a workaround for problems in the other.
>
> So I mention this here in case:
>
> (a) anyone can shed any light on this, or even give a `me too!'
> (b) someone with the same problem googles and finds this workaround
>
> Of course, it's still early days - I can't yet say it won't need more
> reboots ...

Yeah, I've never had good results from the virtual servers feature. I
have used older Dlink routers though, such as DI-524, but the virtual
servers were basically just useless, they sometimes worked, sometimes
not. But I've never seen them lock up the whole router.

These days, I just stick with UPnP and/or manual port forwardings. UPnP
achieves most of what virtual servers used to do.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> Mark T.B. Carroll wrote:
>> I am a new user of the D-Link EBR-2310 wired ethernet router. Overall it
>> seems quite good.
(snip)
> Yeah, I've never had good results from the virtual servers feature. I
> have used older Dlink routers though, such as DI-524, but the virtual
> servers were basically just useless, they sometimes worked, sometimes
> not. But I've never seen them lock up the whole router.

Actually, I've noticed since we started using it, just occasionally a
new TCP connection from inside to outside takes a while to happen. The
data starts flowing in the end, and in the meantime everything else is
quick. I've no idea what causes it, but it's intermittent and only
happened since we switched router.

> These days, I just stick with UPnP and/or manual port forwardings. UPnP
> achieves most of what virtual servers used to do.

Huh, I know nothing of UPnP. Maybe I should look into it.

Mark

On Apr 21, 9:32 pm, "Mark T.B. Carroll" <Mark.Carr...@Aetion.com>
wrote:
> > These days, I just stick with UPnP and/or manual port forwardings. UPnP
> > achieves most of what virtual servers used to do.
>
> Huh, I know nothing of UPnP. Maybe I should look into it.

It's built into every modern router (anything in the past 5 years),
and it's built into every modern operating system (Linux, OS/X,
Windows 2000, ME, XP, etc.). It should be enabled out of the box by
default. If your network application needs to make port forwardings,
then it will generally try it through UP'n'P protocols. It stands for
"Universal Plug And Play".

Yousuf Khan