Away From Home issue on iOS beta

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:10am

I'm trying to set up away from home, but it won't work. I've already set up port forwarding on my router, I've used a port checker to make sure the port is actually open, but when I try to connect via the Channels DVR ios Beta App, I get a message that says the DVR server can not be reached.

I'm using the latest beta app and server version 2020.03.18.2352

I restarted my router, restarted the computer, and then check the log after all of this, and this showed up in the log:
2020/03/19 23:05:19.815263 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using upnp

So it appears to be working, but in reality it's not.

Any ideas on what i'm doing wrong?

eric · March 20, 2020, 6:15am

From your home network please visit http://[DVR-IP]:8089/admin/troubleshooting and see if it reports any issues.

racameron · March 20, 2020, 6:16am

If you manually set up port forwarding on your router, please change the Settings > Remote DVR > Port Forwarding to Manual—not Automatic—and see how that works. You shouldn't combine manual port forwards at your router with NAT-PMP, as that's just asking for unanswerable issues ...

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:19am

it used to work fine with automatic, when it stopped working, that's when I added the port forwarding.

When I changed that setting to Manual now, it still doesn't work. get the same mesasge.

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:21am

also, I have to use comcast xfinity for internet, and daily i get messages from the gateway saying someone is trying to access my DVR server, via port 8089, and it doesn't seem to like that. I don't know how to get it to not care. Maybe that's the issue? But when I do a port checker, the port checker can see port 8089 no problem

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:32am

So I went back in, changed it back to automatic and removed the port forwarding. I then approved access from all the IP addresses that just came in trying to hit port 8089. I arrived at the authorization screen on the website, tapped on authorize, and then this came back when it switch back to the Channels app.

so it's closer, as the website can see my server, but now the app can't access it for some reason.

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:38am

It all seems okay

eric · March 20, 2020, 6:49am

Please disconnect your phone from WiFi and try to connect remotely and see if it works. Some routers will prevent you from reaching the remote hostname when on your local network.

keno · March 20, 2020, 6:53am

Oh, that would make sense. But, i'm getting the same error, but this time i'm using cellular (which is pretty weak inside the house)

eric · March 20, 2020, 6:55am

Please hit the Help button on the top right and Submit Diagnostic Logs so we can see what’s going wrong.

keno · March 20, 2020, 7:02am

okay, just did it. Also, got a different error screen this time when trying to reconnect via cellular.

I didn't know which diagnostics to report, so I sent them all.

eric · March 20, 2020, 7:16am

It looks like everything is setup correctly. I’m guessing you’re just running into your bad cell reception. If you are out of the house and with better reception everything should be working for you now.

Sorry this has been such a process for you.

keno · March 20, 2020, 7:18am

not been a bad process. You've been super responsive. Love the product.

we'll see how it goes in the morning. thanks for the help!

keno · March 21, 2020, 4:05am

This was solved out of the house.

Also, I think this ultimately was something to do with xfinity advanced security. I’ve read up on it and it doesn’t really let you port forward. You have to explicitly allow each IP access to the port for 30 days, but that IP address can change. I might just turn off the advanced security, and secure my network like normal person.

Paul_Lui · March 26, 2020, 3:16pm

I’m having same issue with Comcast, how did you fix the port forwarding issue? Any help appreciated, not an expert.

Paul

keno · March 31, 2020, 3:23am

I just saw this, sorry for the late reply. I ended up not forwarding any ports and set the channels DVR to automatic.

Inside my network, I couldn’t log in via ‘outside the home’ as my router wouldn’t allow it. Then, when I was outside the home, it still wouldn’t work! Argh, right?

I needed to allow ‘bad’ traffic to flow to my dvr computer via the xfinity xfi advanced gateway. It was blocking all of my port 8089 traffic no matter what. So, I tried to log on, I got sent an error from xfinity, logged into that app and told it to allow access (the max was 30 days.. boo!) and then it worked again.

I don’t use out of home access much so I can run this again in the future, but may just turn off the xfi advanced security protection, and protect it myself.