Port forwarding over mobile broadband?

[pablosanlop]

Hi,

I am using Vodafone's mobile broadband at home as there is no fibre in my building. I have a 4G router with Vodafone's SIM card which serves via Wifi all my devices. This router is not the typical pocket size MiFi router that Vodafone sells, but a big one that is usually offered by other operators to provide broadband at home over the mobile network. My issue is the following:

I have a server at home connected via WiFi to that router, thus getting Internet connection over Vodafone's mobile network. I use this server as a web server (ports 80 and 443), email (25, 587) and others.

As I normally did when I had a normal fixed broadband router, I have configured the NAT settings in my router to forward the public ports 80, 443, 25 etc to my server.

However, for some reason, it is not working. When I try to access my web server on http://my_public_ip_address/ I do not get any response. In fact, if I scan the ports on my public IP by any port scanning tool, I get that the mentioned ports are blocked.

It seems Vodafone network is not routing the requests to my IP. I wonder whether Vodafone uses a NAT or firewall that is preventing my server to be accesible for the whole Internet. 

Is this something I can change? I do not really need a static IP address. Normally those used in the fixed broadband are also dynamic but there is no issue.

Do you suggest any workaround? I really want to stay with Vodafone, but given that there is no fibre and given this issue, I am afraid I will need to go for another operator...

I appreciate your help. Thanks!

[Alex]

@pablosanlop Which Mobile Broadband model are you currently using? 

Instructions often vary between devices, so in order to look further into your query, we'd need to know which model you have 🙂

[Greengaz777777]

Hi Alex,

i have a similar issue, we have a RUT955 router with a vodaphone data only SIM card. Issues opening the ports. (For Cctv purposes) Should we have purchased a fixed ip sim instead or is it still possible to open the ports? 

Thsnks 

[Alex]

@Greengaz777777 If it's a third party router and not one of ours, we wouldn't be able to help you out with any troubleshooting/steps for it. We'd only be able to do this if it was one of our devices as we'd have the relevant information. 

[joepucca]

hi.. i tried to enable port forwarding on data only sim and faced the same issue.. Vodafone block all tcp ports with the exception of port 80 443.. I had to cancell my contract..