Horror Stories: Routers

I think you guys might appreciate what I've gone through with routers this week, so here's the story.

As some of you know I recently upgraded my internet speed, this was all well and good, I got the new modem and everything was great. That is, until last weekend. I get home from work and my wife asks me to fix the internet, apparently it's been down for some hours now, no biggy, just a quick reset and we should be up and running again, this tactic has never failed before. Wrong! A few resets and replaced cables later and we're still not working. Well, the modem doesn't seem to be getting a signal so I get in contact with my ISP's support, maybe the whole network is down or in the absolute worst case, the building wiring failing. Well, they are not receiving a signal so I get "we'll have a tech come out and have a look, expect them to call shortly to schedule a meeting". Cool cool, gotta get it running somehow. Shortly I get the call, and they say the soonest they can schedule me for is the 18th, about 2 weeks out. Now some of you know a bit about me, I play a lot of games, I host a lot of services, two weeks? Shit man. Well I guess I gotta get it fixed somehow so: "Sure, I guess if that's what we have to do". (They also added me to call list if something opens up). At this point I'm a bit desperate, two weeks is looking grim, so I try the next thing I can think of: plugging the old modem back in, cause I sure can't change the wiring in the building myself. The old one boots right up and starts working just fine. Great! Well I guess the new modem is a brick now and I'll have slightly slower speeds for a couple weeks, I can live with this.

Well I get a call a couple days later, Monday, from the techs and they say they can have somebody by in about 30 minutes. Cool! Quite a bit earlier. The fellow comes in and he’s pretty chill, does some tests, yup the modem is dead. He also replaces some poor headings on the wires and things are running well. Before he leaves he sees my router, it’s a pretty old one at this point and he offers to upgrade it, I guess he has some others in his vehicle, shouldn’t take much. I’m all for it, a new router sounds great. So I make a backup of my settings while he’s out and swap it, seems to be working and he heads out. Just a bit later I go to change the settings around, you know, the usual localhost IP deal. Up comes a screen I’ve never seen before that goes something like this:

ISP Router Firmware: “Here’s where you can download the app, the only way to modify the settings on your new router.” Me: “Well shit.”

So I go to download the app, but I don’t seem to be able to get it on my phone because I’m running the graphene OS. Fine whatever I’ll just use the backup phone I have for exactly this kind of stupid thing. I get the app downloaded on the backup phone, log in, and am not super impressed with the app, it’s slow, clunky, not user friendly, and where the hell are the advanced options? After some digging and googling I found the port forward screen, finally getting somewhere. So I go to start opening the range I use for minecraft, just five or six ports, one for each server. For those of you unaware, most router firmware allows you to do 25568-25575 for opening every port in that range and 25568,25569,25570… for a list you’d like to open. ISP’s app though, allows you to type in one number, and nothing else. No ranges, no lists, just one port. Now for many people this is fine, but some of the servers I’ve hosted in the past need 200+ ports open (I’m looking at you Lego Universe). I can’t do all of those by hand, one at a time, no way in hell. So I type in the first maybe five ports and promptly go to Staples and buy a new router.

Now I’m not a huge fan of Staples, they’re a bit overpriced, don’t pay their employees nearly enough, and just generally never have what I’m looking for. This time though, they did have some routers, anything less than $100 was out of stock so that narrowed down the options quite a bit, the prices tend to jump pretty quickly after that 120, 150, 180, 300. So not a lot of options. I start looking at a brand I hadn’t seen before and honestly can’t remember now. IP-Link? TP-Stat? Eh something like that. It’s a bit cheaper but seems to have comparable stats to some of the higher priced netgear ones. Weird. I head to amazon and have a look at some of the reviews, the glaring one that really got me was (paraphrased a smidge): “This router requires a subscription to modify the settings. $5.99/Month”. What in the absolute hell. A subscription router? Man, I bloody hate capitalism. So I head back on over to the netgear routers, while they do have an app they don’t force it down your throat, just angrily shove it, there’s still a “No, please don’t!” button and then localhost still works. So I grab this $159.99 Nighthawk AX2400 “On sale from $189.99!” Nah netgear lists it at $159.99 ya shits. But it has the right number of ports, decent speeds, and does wifi? I don’t use wifi for much so spending this much on a router was pretty painful.

Now you think “This must be the end no? There can’t possibly be more?”. Alas. Setting this router up is quite a bit smoother, I’m able to hit the “No, please don’t” button for the app and get all the ports forwarded, piece of cake. Now this is where something weird happens, I get the servers all set up and they should be accessible, but they don’t seem to be. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve forgotten a step, I regularly muck things up. So I go back and check everything. While I’m double checking one of the regular minecraft players pipes up and says he’s able to connect. Huh. That’s strange, I still don’t seem to be able to connect to the external IP. I usually test with the external IP, cause if it works for me, it works for everyone else. So now I’m having a reverse issue, it’s working for everyone else but not for me.Weird. I do some googling. Turns out being able to route internal traffic to a router’s own external IP is not inherently built into every router, it is a special thing that only most routers can do. (This is called NAT loopback if you ever run into this issue). The router I got was one of the few made by netgear that can’t do it. Of course it is. Now I can connect to the servers just fine with the local ip, not a big deal, but I host all sorts of other services as well, like my website and the cloud service connected to it. I need access to these for my files and I just can’t with this router. Uuuuugggggg. Fine, you win, Amazon what do you have? I check the list of netgear routers with NAT loopback support, check the ports, speeds, etc. and find a slightly cheaper, only $120 router that seems to be what I need. It arrives a few days later and it turns out the settings backup can’t be transferred to a different router, a bit of an annoyance, but I get all the settings changed manually and I think, this router nightmare might finally be over. Well, after I get my $160 back. Wish me luck.