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Intermittent Remote Access

CT-DallasCT-Dallas Posts: 157
in Residential Forum
Has anyone else seen situations in which you have mixed results with remote access?

I have two projects that are in some ways similar, but when it comes to remote access, I have completly different results. Each project is using Netgear firewalls. One is DSL and one is Cable Modem.

I almost never have problems connecting to the DSL residence. I VNC to 25 seperate panels, and connect via Studio without issue.

I can rarely connect to the Cable Modem house. Same firewall rules, but it seems as if my results vary based on where I try to connect from. If I try to connect from home, I can not connect. If I try to connect from a hot spot near the residence, I can connect. The house is running What_Is_My_IP and reports in every 30 minutes, so connectivity to the outside world is there. I considered my home firewall, but I am trying the same ports when I connect to the DSL residence -- so it seems that my firewall is not the cause.

Any suggestions?

Comments

  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    Likely different isp's with different permissions. some isp's block certain ports and they may allow certain ports if on the same isp domain. i assume you're using port forwarding and not a vpn connection so is the port forwarding the same? what isp do you use dsl or cable.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    Most of our clients have T1s.

    But for those who do have Cable Modems (the WAN IPs change on a regular basis) I have written a little routine that checks the WAN IP address. It then emails it along with the detailed report I get from the master each day.

    As long as I have the current WAN address, I usually get right in.

    About the only consistent trouble I have is with installs where the client has a separate IT company managing thier home network. They usually lock the network down so tight that I can't get through or they do goofy things that muck up the system.

    I'm quite frankly surprised at how unprofessional and unqualified a lot of these store-front IT companies are. We have one guy who does a few of our client's houses that doesn't track and therefor cannot remember the user and pass of his routers. He quite often has to factory reset the routers as a result. He tried to bill us for his time of resetting all our settings. That didn't make it too far. the same guy was at a house once and didn't have a laptop to log on to. He'd hoped to use the client's. I was there and let him log on with mine. However, after about 40 mintues, I told him I needed to get back on. That made him mad and he started yelling at me about it.

    fun stuff. Sorry to thread jack.
  • CT-DallasCT-Dallas Posts: 157
    Eric,
    The house has a static IP, but we still have it report the current IP every 30 minutes - more so because we did not request static -- it just seems that Time Warner aka RoadRunner just issued the residence one.

    Vining,
    Do you think the isp would be blocking based on the location of the inbound? The DSL isp is ATT aka SBC. The Cable Modem isp is RoadRunner via Time Warner Cable. As for port forwarding on the inside of the router - everything is configured as far as ports go. I can remote into the house from some locations around town, but not others. This is causing me to think that I am being blocked by location rather than all together. Logically, this does not make sense to me.

    Chris
  • CT-DallasCT-Dallas Posts: 157
    Here is a quick follow up on this.

    I had one of our other offices try to VNC into this residence to test the blocking port traffic theory from outside ISP's -- and they were able to VNC into the house... They hit the Dallas residence from Colorado, and I can not hit the Dallas Residence from Dallas.

    From the house, I can use the outside IP and it works -- the traffic leaves the local network and returns via port forwarding on the router.

    I was hoping to gain support for one of the theories floating around, but it would appear that I squashed them rather than lend support to them.
  • CT-DallasCT-Dallas Posts: 157
    I am not sure why this worked, but while talking with my ISP about a potential issue with my subnet - they had me lower my internet connection security from Medium High to Medium in Windows.

    The reason I dont understand this is because I could always hit House A, but House B would not work.

    I am speachless, but logged in - so whatever works...
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