SDS100/SDS200: SDS 200 WAN Connection to Web Server Troubleshooting

[bostonkid]

I have been struggling to set up Proscan to receive outside (WAN) connections on port 5000, with the aim of connecting to my web server outside of my home.
As illustrated in the attached image; my ISP connection enters my house and connects to a Netgear Nighthawk CAX80 in my basement. This modem/router combo has been disabled for any routing capabilities, wifi, and set to bridge mode. I am currently unable to connect to it anywhere on the network by typing in the router's address and can only connect by physically connecting an ethernet cable directly to it in the basement.

Upstairs, in my office, I have an ASUS GT-AX 11000 Pro Tri-band Wifi router, which is the main router for our home. This has ethernet cables, connecting an ASUS Nuc 14 Pro (acting as a home server/ProScan server) and my SDS 200. The SDS 200 is further connected to the NUC via USB cable.

Currently, I can start the web server via ProScan, and connect to it INSIDE my LAN, by navigating a browser window to 192.168.50.174:5000. When attempting to connect to this same open port from outside of my network, the connection is refused. I have used various network monitoring tools, and command line (netstat) prompts to view open/listening ports, and verified that ProScan is indeed listening on port 5000, not just on 127.0.0.0 localhost, but also via 0.0.0.0

My next troubleshooting step was to conduct a deep dive into windows defender on the Asus NUC and verify there was no traffic being restricted on this port, and to add a rule allowing it if so - no problems there. I then connected to my Asus Router and proceeded to verify that port 5000 was being forwarded and not blocked by a router-level firewall - again no issues there. Out of fear that I may have a double NAT connection (either from ISP or the CAX 80 in the basement) I have checked my external WAN IP address through various online tools, making sure there wasn't more than one hop from the same WAN IP I see in ProScan - again, nothing indicating this.

ProScan is giving me no issues with audio configuration over URL or anything else. I am enjoying audio recording and txt logging on the NUC PC without problems. If I navigate to the NUC's ip address and port 5000 from within my LAN, I can connect to the scanner web server without problems, listen to the audio, and even control the scanner remotely. Any outside connection is refused.


I feel as if I've exhausted all troubleshooting steps I can think of and am truly stumped. I have googled and read through several forum posts here, as well as the online manual. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Jim

 

[bostonkid]

I also have a Lorex NVR surveillance system on my house. I have 5 wired ethernet POE cameras around my house, which all feed to an NVR system for recording and networking. I can watch them locally on my PCs in the house, as well as using the Lorex Cloud app on my android phone while not at home.

Come to think of it, I have never requested or had to forward specific ports for this service in my router or allowed it through PC firewall exceptions - it has simply always worked outside of my house, straight out of the box - which makes the ProScan server complications even more confusing.

 

[buddrousa]

The way your NVR works is it checks in with the cloud server to see if a user request to see video.
If a user is requesting video it sends the stream to the cloud and the client connects to the cloud not to the NVR so no need to open ports.

 

[bostonkid]

*** SOLVED! ***
I dove again into the logging section of my Asus Router, while connecting from the outside to see what I could uncover about the incoming traffic requests and why they were being blocked. While there, I noticed another LAN IP address - which happened to be my primary desktop PC. Prior to migrating to a dedicated always-on NUC PC for my plex server/proscan/media server etc, I had been using my larger full size desktop PC as the ProScan server when first messing around with it, and had forwarded port 5000 for that IP.
I deleted that forwarding rule. I saved, applied, and rebooted the router. Upon restart, I fired up the ProScan server, tried the connection to my WAN ip from my cell phone and boom! It worked instantly!!!! Finally!

I'm still puzzled as to why allowing 5000 on the old pc, that wasn't running ProScan or listening on 5000 would block 5000 from being used or forwarded on the NUC PC - especially when the other PC is off - but who cares. It works now thankfully.

Thank you all for your assistance!

 

[buddrousa]

2 conflicting addresses for the same port so the logic in the router did nothing.