FTP port forward not working to Imac??

Question

Level 1

38 points

FTP port forward not working to Imac??

So basically I have time capsule and I opened up SSH and FTP to my Imac. I can SSH to my box just fine and I can FTP to my Imac "if" i'm on the LAN. But, the port forwarding from the WAN to my imac isn't working. Anyone else have this problem? Has anyone else got this working?

I just used the standard TCP port 21 for FTP. And again FTP to imac is fine internally its only from the WAN it won't work. Tried deleting and re-adding the port forwarding rule and I've double checked all my IP's and everything and still a no go. I just get connection refused when I try to connect. But the rule to forward SSH works fine because I can connect that way to my box.

Imac, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 7, 2008 8:29 AM

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Answer 1

yoshac

Level 1

10 points

Mar 10, 2008 10:45 AM in response to Garrett Howe

Yes, I have the exact same problem. Seems to be a TC bug, blocking port 21.

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Answer 2

Mar 11, 2008 1:42 PM in response to yoshac

Agus mise.

Can access my ibook via port 22 using the excellent SSH client Fugu. Can then see the Time Capsule as a volume but can't access it.

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Answer 3

Mar 13, 2008 3:20 PM in response to Garrett Howe

Same problem here, tested with the default FTP NAT rule.

Hope Apple fix it quickly with a new firmware.

Regards.

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Answer 4

Mar 13, 2008 4:09 PM in response to Chustanus

There is a workarround, if configure the local (imac) FTP port to other than 21. I use PureFTPd Manager and put 2121 as ftp port. Then create a Nat rule with public port 21 and private port the one selected before (2121), it runs for me.

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Answer 5

Mar 13, 2008 5:18 PM in response to Garrett Howe

Some ISPs block port 21 for incoming requests, so using another port might be the best solution.

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Answer 6

Garrett Howe Author

Level 1

38 points

Mar 14, 2008 11:36 AM in response to Garrett Howe

Essentially all I did was use SFTP instead of FTP. Since I can get SSH working through TC that allows me to connect via SFTP instead. So if you can't open port 21 simply open up SSH on your mac and switch to SFTP and that will work.

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Answer 7

Apr 20, 2008 2:53 PM in response to maroudicasoudi

Second you on that. Most ISP's i know of block a whole range of ports. I just got this list out of my ISP. The solution is to avoid using these services, or use them on non-standard ports.

+*Ports that are typically blocked by your ISP*+
21, TCP FTP
25, TCP SMTP
69, UDP TFTP
80, TCP WEBserv
137-139, TCP/UDP NetBios
161, UDP SNMP
548, TCP AFPove
12345, ICMP/TCP Netbus
27374, TCP ASP

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Answer 8

PEIhelp

Level 1

9 points

Apr 21, 2008 8:16 PM in response to Garrett Howe

This router is horrible for forwarding ports, and the default host with firmware 7.3.1 does not work.

There are 2 things that will cause your ftp to not work:

1. You have to have port 21 forwarded to your computer either with a static address or with a static DHCP reservation.

2. If your operating system on the LAN side is OS X, the built in FTP server has problems with PASV mode. The built in FTP server expects to return the IP address on the WAN side, but what it returns is the LAN side and for security reasons PASV mode just hangs your FTP connection. You can tell your FTP program to not use PASV mode but to use Active mode, the built in server as far as I can tell does not give the option. I can use any other router to forward port 21 and it works fine, Linksys, Dlink etc the Airport Extreme is extremely poor in this manner.

What i did was to not use the built in FTP Server and installed PureFTP server and to tell it to use Active mode, it is free and you can get it from here:

http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/pureftpd/

If anyone from Apples engineering department reads this forum, please fix the following in the next release, i have a huge amount of customers who are upset for paying $200 for a router that can't do simple router functions properly:

1. Default host is broken with the 7.3.1 firmware
2. The latest windows airport software gives errors when you try to even set up a default host.
3. Incoming VPN connections stop working after a few hours with 10.5.2 Server with 7.3.1, with firmware 7.2.1 it works fine as long as the default host is turned on.
4. Apple remote desktop connections with 7.3.1 are very choppy and laggy.
5. Microsoft Remote Desktop connections after a few hours cause the connection to drop every 10.15 seconds after the router has been on for a few hours (Port 3389)

That is what I immediately need fixed, if anyone else knows of any bugs please post them so they can fix this device.

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