Hi,

I currently have a Vigor 2865 which is live using virgin media GIG1 hub that's passthrough mode.

I have been testing my port forwards/open ports using a managed netgear switch which i have on my network (192.168.0.11)

If i do a port redirection, it works fine - can go to open port checker and it says that port 8000 is open

however if i just open the port it does not work and i am confused as to why?

Is my config correct? i have screenshots below of the two examples

https://gyazo.com/0aa9fa2a51608ad37f5fd70a82de9df3 - redirection which works

https://gyazo.com/26af2b557bb18e022985fdf538dfee8e - open port which does not work

That's because the Port Redirection you're doing is translating the TCP 8000 external port into TCP 80 for the internal port used by your server.
Open Ports just opens a range, it can't translate port numbers.

This is a fresh guide that covers the differences nicely: Port Forwarding

Hi,

i have had a read of the guide and i am still uncertain why it does not work.

In an example that i have had it working

i am a telephone engineer and install PBXs with SIP trunks and always set up remote access

we would always use the open ports and point them to the PBXs ip address.

One of the ports would include access to the web based version of the PBX using port 80.

How am i able to open that port to the PBX but not the netgear switch?

As admin3 said, they do 2 different things.

"Port redirection" takes an external port and redirects it to a different internal port (i.e from 8000 to 80 in your example) - in this scenario you can reach your switch via http://EXTERNALIP:8000 and http://INTERNALIP:80

"Open port" just passes 8000 through to the internal IP.

Port 80 is the 'default' for http - your switch doesn't "listen" on port 8000, it's listening on port 80 - so to 'Open port' you would have to specify port 80 instead

Alternatively login to the Switch Management and see if there's an option to change the http port to 8000 there, once it's listening on port 8000, you can use the 'open port' method instead.

Hi,

Many thanks for the explanation on this one. I think i have my head round it now.

So by default all devices with a web interface will listen on port 80 (unless changed)

These devices then see that there is a route set up for them via port 8000 (the redirect in my case) which i why i can access my device on http://00.00.00.00:8000

Open ports will only work if the device has been specified to listen to those ports. (e.g SIP trunks will listen on port 5060, HTTP on 80, HTTPS on 443)