IBB blocking ports?

Mutant_Fruit

If you havn't made physical changes to your router, i don't think IBB have a legal leg to stand on. I couldn't be certain about this, but if its malfunctioning, and you followed instructions as per instruction manual, and it didn't help, you are entitled to a replacement if it is within warrenty period. I would presume that the router would have at least 1 year warrenty with IBB, and if it doesn't, you should still be able to get a replacement, but it should be IBB that do this on your behalf.

gsand

they just keep saying since i used factory reset which hasnt worked so i dont even know if i did factory reset that my support guarantee has expired. i dont see how a factory reset can damge the router as its a manually supported technique.i think it mustve been faulty when i first received it recently enough. IBB just told me to talk to manufacturer and they wont do anything. manufacturer and dlink rep told me i have to post it to the uk and it may take a while to get back which is why i havnt posted it off yet-i was told that i had to do that 3 days ago. its all seems a bit strange to me.

deadlock

*belch*

gsand

but in my case-all the router ports were closed to start with-what was i expected to do when engineers left my house without telling me my username/password and all my ports blocked. basically all i could do was surf http pages with all my ports blocked. and thats not what im paying for an 8:1 connection for.i made numerous phone calls and emails asking but wasnt replied to so factory reset was the obvious alternative and as u have already there must be something faulty as the reset is not working.

deadlock

The criteria by which you determined that your ports were blocked was flawed, as I explained earlier.

gsand

was flawed? i couldnt use any web application which requires any normal port u can name-some even specified they could not find an open port to use-thats proof enough. i simply went to an online port/tcp scan and did a scan from a few different sites-it auto received my ip-all reported that near all ports were closed-i think 1 was open out of the first 60000. all my ports are open now as i can use the apps i cudnt before due to the fact i am not on the router anymore and using a direct connection. im not making it up-the ports were blocked-its of no benefit for me to say they were and are blocked if they wernt-for if they wernt blocked i wudnt be trying to get into the control panel and hence wudnt need my username/password at all and could use the router as normal.

spongebob

Dunno who Deadlock is but I say now unto IBB , BRING BACK CHAZ !

The rights and wrongs of this issue have been lost in the mists of time. I doubt that IBB can post an email in here proving they mailed gsand the username/password combo . As long as gsand has this gizmo, IBB can never prove their service works as stated.

I suggest that IBB, as a goodwill gesture, take the damn thing back and issue gsand with another one of the same model. A quick PM will suffice to set that up.

I also suggest that gsand confirm receipt of same in here in the same spirit of goodwill. Not by PM but publically.

As IBB are planning a series of rollouts beyond the Dublin area I am sure that they do not want to frighten us culchies with the implication that their customer service is other than Professional and Understanding . I am equally convinced that gsand is a fair minded guy who will confirm whether he simply got a dodge router (easy when they are made so cheaply nowadays ) and was unlucky . This happens.

Finally, bring back Chaz, Chaz had that customer service 'je ne sais quoi' that works in an environment like Boards . There is no point in a degenerative yes you did / no you didn't Panto Queen spat.

M

eth0_

Originally posted by deadlock
interfering with the router invalidated any support that IBB were obliged to provide. This is all standard stuff and is not unique to IBB, or even to the telco industry.

And what on earth else was he supposed to do when IBB wouldn't answer his support emails or return his calls?

Ripwave

Originally posted by gsand
when scanning the router for open ports i was scanning the actually router address 192.168 etc, and i tried using a lot of web applications which told me the ports were closed.

Plonk!

Sorry, but until you can figure out why that "test" failed, then you're wasting your own time, and everyone elses with your rantings.

(Here's a hint - 192.168 addresses are "private" addresses - nobody on the internet can access a service on your 192.168 subnet, which is just as well, because there are millions of people the world over using the same 192.168 subnets for their own private LANs).

neokenzo

Am I wrong in saying that when a factory reset/hard reset is done on a modem/router, the login and password is set at default? Surely Dlink would have the factory login and password. I dont use Dlink but when I do a factory reset on my router then the login and password reverts back to admin and password respectively. Maybe you can try that.

Chaz

I was called?

Um

I dont work in the Support area, nor in Dublin, so I am not sure about policies etc. As far I understand, and its only my opinion and what i reckon, is that the DLinks are passworded as you have asked for it to be admined and supported by IBB. I might be wrong, as I said - Im guessing.

I left supporting boards last time as I was being shot down as the messenger only trying to keep info flowing. As always, I am willing to help, but due to the fact that I am now in Cork and not too involved wiht support, I only have bits of info re this.

And BTW. Most mail from IBB will have a privacy/confidential clause which means that its for you, not the world. Please respect that before you post mail on a public forum.

gsand

@ neokenzo :i have tried the default username/password for dlink 604s but hey dont work

@ripwave: i have not only scanned 192 but also my individual ip from ibb-62.... etc which any useful online port scanner does so need to assume ive done useless scans when infact the scans hardly matter when the fact is that the ports are blatantly closed and have been since day1. im not just saying they are closed for no reason-its because when i use the router nothing works. my 'rantings' were only posted when incorrect information about the issue was posted here by an ibb rep instead of to my private email which seems to be a foreign idea to ibb at the moment.

@chaz:i did not post anything from an email i received from ibb as infact i have only recieved 1 email to date not concerning this and i did not bring the issue to public attention as of contacting the manufacturer due to no help from ibb if u read back u will see that from dates posted. the ibb rep infact posted specific info from the problem here first before i mentioed any problems past initial questions to the boards members.

koneko

Was reading this topic with interest, then I just noticed deadlock deleted all his posts?

eth0_

Originally posted by koneko
Was reading this topic with interest, then I just noticed deadlock deleted all his posts?

Must have had his wrists slapped by a boss in IBB for his posts...

spongebob

Originally posted by Chaz
I was called?

The voice of sanity !

Could you PM gsand and put the poor fella (and yeer image) out of their respective miseries , that deadlock was only winding the poor fella up and getting yiz a bad name.

I see that deadlock may have felt a bit guilty about the error of his ways , especially the error of telling the customer THEY WERE WRONG when a polite PM could have sorted the issue long ago.

I trust that gsand will confirm when the issue has been resolved to his satisfaction as well.

M

Chaz

Gsand - PM me whats going on - and ill see if i can get any answers for you.

su_dios

Mutant_Fruit could you explain your post a bit more, I dont know that much about ports. If you are using any p2p programs could you tell me what ports you are using? Or if you needed to change ports?

su_dios

just as a matter of interest, gsands what basestation are you connected to?I'm botanic

Mutant_Fruit

Think of a port as a doorway. Each doorway can only be used by one program at a time. Firewalls and routers work by letting only certain doorways be accessed, and by default they block every port (doorway) that is available except the common ones such port 80 for browsing, and 21 for FTP, and the e-mail ones.

As i said already, each program uses a port to access the internet, and each program defaults to a different one. Bittorrent might default to 6000, Counterstrike mihgt use 7000 and Kazza might use 8000. Therefore if you want to use these programs on the internet, you have to open the ports they use (read the router manual for specifics on how to do this).

ISP's can sometimes take advantage of the fact each program defaults to a certain port by limiting traffic on that port. E.g. if an ISP wants to limit kazaa traffic, a basic way to do it would be to limit all traffic on port 8000. However this can be circumnavigated by just setting Kazaa's default port to anything other than 8000, e.g. 8001.

Depending on your router (i.e. if your router has NAT), you may also have to forward the ports to your computers internal IP address (192.168....).

Traffic shapers look for specific kinds of internet activity, and advanced ones can easily recognize P2P type traffic. If IBB ran a packetshaper, no matter what port you specify in your P2P program, you will end up with really slow speeds.

Slow speeds are also a result of routers being unable to forward incoming connections to your computer. With bittorrent, you get faster speeds if you can accept incoming connections as well as making outgoing ones. Therefore if your router isn't set up correctly to allow Bittorrent take incoming connections, you will experience slower speeds

(My knowledge about packet shapers is a bit flakey, so i may be wrong with what i said above, if so, just correct me, don't flame me)

Hopefully that's clearer now.

EDIT: I'm on the tallaght tower, and have no speed problems.

griffdaddy

whereabouts is the tallaght tower mutant? i thought that would never be up and running so i went with iol. can tallaght do ripwave?

Ripwave

Originally posted by griffdaddy
whereabouts is the tallaght tower mutant? i thought that would never be up and running so i went with iol. can tallaght do ripwave?

IBB only deployed the 2.4GHz Ripwave gear on 3 Rock. I've been told that they plan to deploy the new 3.5GHz gear in 13 locations around Dublin, but I wasn't told when this will happen.

Mutant_Fruit

tallaght has been up and running for over 9 months But if you ware wanting to switch ISP, wait for the 3.5ghz gear, to guarentee good performance.

As for where exactly it is, i don't know. I suppose i could get some binoculars and look along the diredction the antenne points, but the best directions i could give would be "look towards tallaght, and its in front of you.

su_dios

Thanks mutant_fruit that was clearer but i still cant seem to fix the problem. im running mac osx and have a wireless router(airport). Its really annoying me right now. Any chance anyone could give me a bit of help over email? pm me if you can.. i would be very greatful

Ripwave

Originally posted by su_dios
Thanks mutant_fruit that was clearer but i still cant seem to fix the problem. im running mac osx and have a wireless router(airport). Its really annoying me right now. Any chance anyone could give me a bit of help over email? pm me if you can.. i would be very greatful

Is there any chance that your 2.4GHz airport is interfering with your 2.4GHz wireless broadband connection?

su_dios

I had thought that would have been a problem at the start but the installer ensured me that this would not interfere. It just seems to be with p2p or bittorrent only. I do realise this could be due to packetshaping...but then is this a very recent development?As i did not have these same problems 3 weeks ago. Also it appears that I am the only one having problems?

bricks

Originally posted by gsand
@ neokenzo :i have tried the default username/password for dlink 604s but hey dont work

@ripwave: i have not only scanned 192 but also my individual ip from ibb-62.... etc which any useful online port scanner does so need to assume ive done useless scans when infact the scans hardly matter when the fact is that the ports are blatantly closed and have been since day1. im not just saying they are closed for no reason-its because when i use the router nothing works. my 'rantings' were only posted when incorrect information about the issue was posted here by an ibb rep instead of to my private email which seems to be a foreign idea to ibb at the moment.

Your router uses Network Address Translation which effectivley means that by defualt all the ports will appear to be closed from the outside.
All your doing when you scan is scanning the routers own ports which should have no services running on them.
The 192.168.x.y addresses are non-routeable and can't be directly scanned from the internet. They are private addresses.
I'm not really good at explaining it, see below it might help you.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm [Simple explanation of NAT]

As for the password on the DLink router, which one is it?

dredg

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit

Traffic shapers look for specific kinds of internet activity, and advanced ones can easily recognize P2P type traffic. If IBB ran a packetshaper, no matter what port you specify in your P2P program, you will end up with really slow speeds.

This depends.
Packet shapers generally operate to a policy, and they inspect each packet, decide what (if any) policy to apply to it and then let it through. A policy may consist of granting some packets a higher or lower priority than others based on protocol, some hosts a higher priority than others regardless of protocol, or perhaps the limiting of available bandwidth to a host o protocol. Or any combination of the above depending on your requirements.

e.g. you may wish to shape your traffic such that outgoing http gets a lower priority than ssh, and that Enemy Territory gets a higher priority than everything else. You may also decide that host alpha.your.network should have a lower priority for ftp than beta.your.network because beta.your.network is slurping an iso, but beta should also have its bandwidth limited to 50% because you dont want to hit your cap.

dredg

In general, ISPs do not block ports.
Nor do they traffic shape certain activities.
There are exceptions to this, most notable the disabling of things like ICMP across a network because $worm_of_the_week is wreaking havoc. I dont agree with this personally - ICMP is not the afterthought of IP that everyone seems to think it is. Disagree all you like, I don't give a rats ass so dont even bother replying just to tell me thats its "more secure" to block incoming pings.
Another exception is blocking inbound smtp on dialup accounts.
Note that contention is not traffic shaping. Traffic shaping is applying policies to packets. Contention is "you and x number of users are sharing this line."

The are a couple of reasons that ISPs don't block ports is because once they start doing this, you're no longer getting the service that you thought you signed up for.
The dont usually do traffic shaping because it is intensive on large amounts of traffic. Imagine inspecting each and every packet that passes over dsl, and then doing things to it like prioritising it over other packets. Yuk.
Probably the biggest reason that ISPs don't implement this is if they did, users would whine, bitch and moan at them for ****ing with their traffic. Sort of like this thread, but with more players and done over the phone. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

What does happen, however, is customer equipment like DSL routers (and I use the term loosely) NAT the connections behind the "router". NAT works by translating address (usually private non-routable addresses - see RFC1918) so that they look like they originate from your public ip (external ip of your "router"). The NATting device takes care of tracking which traffic came from which pc and where to send the inbound replies to. Because you have a number of machines using a single ip, accessing individual machines from the internet becomes impossible, unless you forward inbound ports from the "router" to one pc (and it can be only one pc, unless you map stuff like $external_ip:8000 -> $internal_ip:80, but thats where it gets really messy). This breaks apps that rely on true two-way communication like p2p apps and file transfers using dcc or instant messengers.

p.s. I do not work for and am not affiliated with IBB in any way.

Paulw

Originally posted by Chaz
Most mail from IBB will have a privacy/confidential clause which means that its for you, not the world. Please respect that before you post mail on a public forum.

Actually, once you receive the email, it's yours to do with as you want. The mail can have a privacy/confidential clause, but that won't hold water in a court of law. it's just an attempt at CYA.

:cool:

gsand

just to give a final update on the matter discussed earlier-

after much help from the extremely useful chaz I decided it would just be best to send faulty router back to the manufacturer so i did so last week (havnt heard anything from them subsequently , so anyway few days ago i thought id give the consumers asociation a buzz and ask them what the official line was on a matter akin to this. they said that it was IBBs responsibilty to sort it out and anyone who said otherwise was wrong and that they would back that up by law-i was just curious, matter over as far as im concerned. so next day called up to sandyford to pay the IBB bill and had a brief chat with the polite woman at the front desk who had noticed the issue on my account whilst i was paying. So i mentioned the consumer asociation and she looked a little worried and off she went to the back office, had a chat with someone else and said they felt it had not been handled very well at all and that they would look into it. Not looking to cause trouble I told her to forget about it since i was paying now and the router would be replaced by dlink eventually. She apologised and I left assuming all would be sorted when the router returned from dlink over however long it takes them(still hasnt arrived).

But....I got a call from IBB today(a few days later) saying very sorry we are couriering a new router to you now and it will be with you presently!!! So new router arrived as mentioned all sealed up in box with cd,manual (everything the original one lacked) and seems wo work perfectly. In the package was also a note from the member of staff who had consistently told me no chance of help or support on the matter apologising for the inconvenience. Very nice of them.

So moral of the story is that the IBB customer service got there in the end and the matter has been resolved amicably and I'm happy to continue as a customer-after a bit of a battle. Thanks to everyone here who helped out and IBB (yes even the rep who decided to some in here one evening) .

Regards,Gsand.