Trouble With Port Forwarding and Rogers Support

[Lucky17]

I have been having constant issues with the rogers app and port forwarding in general ever since the feature was removed from the routers gateway. I used to just be able to enter the device IP, and the port and it would work perfectly. Until Rogers completely removed the access from the gateway and forced users onto the app for port forwarding. I have had nothing but issues with this app, first I could not even get into the app it simply would not work, contacted support numerous times, they kept saying they made a ticket and gave me a time window to wait, no response. Then I would contact back and they would "escalate" the issue and again, no response. Just a repetitive cycle of nothing. Then one day the app started working a few months later and then I was able to port forward, for about 2 months until my device stopped appearing in the app. This should have been no problem but instead of allowing us to manually enter an IP or choose from a list of devices, we can ONLY use the list of devices they gave us. Again, I contact support and get no help until the issue sorts itself (it never did I just started using another device). Now, I have been months without being able to port forward because when I select the device to port forward, it get's the IP wrong by 1 digit. Ever since my devices IP changed months ago the app never adjusted and I have not been able to port forward at all for months and Rogers support provides ZERO help other than making tickets which I never hear back from. I am beyond frustrated and confused at how difficult this can be when this would not be a problem if there is simply a secondary option to allow a custom device IP rather than forcing users to select from a list of devices. I am genuinely unsure what I am supposed to do here as Rogers does not help and I cannot port forward anything from my server because of this horrible system.

***Edited Labels***

[RogersZia]

Hello and welcome to the Community @Lucky17,

While port forwarding is unsupported, I am sure our Resident Experts would be happy to help you with this one. @Datalink @-G- your insight is always appreciated :).

RogersZia

[-G-]

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@RogersZia wrote:

Hello and welcome to the Community @Lucky17,

While port forwarding is unsupported, I am sure our Resident Experts would be happy to help you with this one. @Datalink @-G- your insight is always appreciated :).

RogersZia

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I wish that I could provide some useful advice but this problem has been going on for years...

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/xfinity-app/port-forwarding-in-xfi-has-the-right-device-but...

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/xfinity-app/port-forward-ip-address-incorrect/61d0c375af4f9...

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/plan/port-forwarding-gives-incorrect-ip-address/642cdd804d0...

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/xfinity-app/xfinity-gateway-port-forward-incorrect-ip/6292b...

https://forums.xfinity.com/conversations/your-home-network/xfinity-app-port-forwarding-device-dropdo...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/nbfhqp/port_forwarding_in_xfi_has_the_right_device...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/sdeqz5/port_forwarding_device_sets_to_wrong_ip/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/ye211d/port_forwarding_reserved_ip_address_showing...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast_Xfinity/comments/11rds6t/xfi_port_forwarding_reserving_the_wrong_ip...

... and I have yet to see any viable solution posted or any reliable way to prevent this from happening.

In Comcast's support forum, the moderators usually ask the original poster to contact them privately... after which, they close the thread without posting any solution, work-around, or any other follow-up.

I don't normally use port forwarding but I do set up reserved IP addresses in DHCP for a handful of devices.  Normally, for devices like printers, Wi-Fi access points,  VoIP ATAs, etc., these devices tend to be IPv4-only and I have never had a problem with them ever getting assigned the "wrong" IP address.

HOWEVER, I have seen this problem happen with my Windows PC, which is dual-stack and prefers to use IPv6.  This can cause the system to either not appear in the device list, even while it is running and actively communicating on the network... or it can sometimes get assigned a different IP address, just like what you see.  You can probably make things more "stable" by configuring Windows to prefer IPv4 over IPv6, but this is something that I refuse to do.

I currently run on my own network gear and have my Xfinity Gateway in Bridge Mode.  It is not a Rogers-supported configuration but it works exceptionally well.

@CommunityHelps :  Is there any way that you can contact your counterparts at Comcast to find out what they do to troubleshoot these sorts of device management and port forwarding issues for their customers?

[-G-]

You have probably read and re-read these instructions on how to configure port forwarding many times but I'll post them for others who find this thread:

https://www.rogers.com/support/internet/use-port-forwarding-with-rogers-xfinity

https://www.rogers.com/support/device-guides/en/connected-home/tutorial/app-rogers-xfinity-ios-smart...

The following comes from Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/xfi-port-forwarding

(If the link above redirects to another page, try opening it again.)  Note the tips for dealing with port forwarding issues with IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack hosts and dealing with problematic situations with static (reserved) IP addresses.

[Lucky17 · Accepted solution]

I was looking through one of the links you sent and when I went into my connected devices on my router page (10.0.0.1) I saw a random device with a reserved IP address which happened to be my server's old IP and the same IP the rogers app was showing for my server. I changed that unknown devices reserved IP and enabled reserved IP for my server setting it to the IP showing up in the rogers app and then refreshed the IP on the laptop (went into command prompt, used "ipconfig /release" then "ipconfig /renew") and the IP matched with the app and got my port forwards working again. I am not sure how long or well this solution will work but thank you for the help.

[-G-]

I don't know what enhancements Comcast made to its DHCP server code but with the implementations that I have worked with over the last 30+ years, a DHCP address pool was meant to be used by devices that do not require a static/fixed IP address.  (That was the primary reason why DHCP was invented.). If you have devices in your network that require a stable/fixed/known IP address, DHCP supports that too, but the best practice is to allocate those IP addresses from outside the dynamic pool.

Yes, a number of (most?) consumer routers allow you to reserve IP addresses inside the dynamic pool. Other firewalls, such as OPNsense, do not.  (See their comment about defining Reservations.). The problem with the Xfinity Gateways is that they strive to make things simple but their implementation is not great (or all that robust) when it comes to device management.