Serviio

I have read many of the posts on this forum about remote connectivity problems but I still cannot solve mine. In the Serviio console I go to the remote tab and check the automatically configure your router and save and then the connectivity status gives two green arrows. If I then try to connect from my phone either with Servvigo or by entering the MediaBrowser address in my browser it conects, if I have Wifi turned on on the phone which is part of my home network. If Wifi is turned off and I am trying to connect through cellular signal (Verison) Serviigo and the web browser fail to connect. The phone browser will connect to other web addresses. I tried using a hot spot ( guest wifi at a Chick Fil a) and neither would connect to MediaBrowser. My router is a Xfinity xfi router which does not let you access the router through its web address, you have to us the Xfinity app. I have tried unchecking the automatic connectivity box and assigning the 2 port forwards in the app. When I check connectivity after doing this I have two green check marks but it still doesn't work. I have tried turning off my anti virus and fire wall (Norton). Didn't help. Access to Serviio is allowed in Norton firewall. Access is obviously being blocked somehow in the router but I don't know enough to figure it out.

First question: do you have the paid version of Serviio? This is Serviio Pro, and is required for ServiiGo to work. Same with accessing MediaBrowser, it requires the Pro version.

of course

OK. I will say that I too have Xfinity/Comcast, and I could never get port forwarding to work using their app or web page. I finally had to put the modem in Bridge mode and use my own router, which gave me full control of the port forwarding, and then it worked fine. If it's all working when you are inside your firewall, but not working outside, then your Comcast modem is not port forwarding correctly. Even when I contacted their support, and they insisted they had it set correctly, it never worked.

There are multiple posts on their forum reporting the same thing. When I used one of the online port checkers it said the port was closed. I don't know whether i'll use your solution or not but it's nice to know that would work. I am curious though, that if the port is closed , why does the Serviio console give those green checkmarks for conectivity?

We'll probably never really know. Either the firewall is misreporting its status, or Serviio isn't checking it correctly. I will say that Serviio is showing red for my firewall connectivity, but I know it really does work. So probably a little of A and a little of B.

Considering the huge base of Xfinity customers there must be many of them trying to set up Serviio Media server. Isn't there anyone out there who has discovered how to succeed in doing this without having to bridge a second router.

I have finally solved the port forwarding problem with Serviio and Xfinity at least for my system. I had never been able to connect to Serviio Pro over the internet despite multiple attempts but I decided to try one more time. In the Xfinity app I opened the 2 ports 23424 and 23425 for my main desktop computer which the Xfinity app said had an IP address of 10.0.0.xxx. This number is also listed as an ipv4 address on my computer in the IP setting of the network profile and on the web page for my Gateway as a fixed IP address. I am ignorant of what this number is or where it comes from, but it is not the IP address that Xfinity is opening ports for and It is not the IP address that you use to communicate with Serviio over the internet. That number is the Public IP address. There are many ways to find the Public IP address; I used Portchecker.com. When I used that site to check the 2 ports and plugged in fix IP address10.0.0.xxx it said the ports were closed. When I let it use my current Public IP address it said the ports were open. When you go to Serviio console remote section and put that fixed address in the advanced settings external address then the connectivity status fails. If you put in the current Public IP address, it passes. When you enter Http://<current public IP address>:23424/mediabrowser, away from your home network, it works. The problem for people with too little knowledge like me is that there are so many IP address and people don’t specify specifically which one they are talking about. I only stumbled on this solution because I read a response from Xfinity to a complaint about this problem that they way the do port forwarding on their system does not work on a fixed IP address so the correct IP address could not be the 10.0.0.xxx that they show for my computer. The last remaining problem is that when the Public IP address gets changed by Comcast, the link will no longer work. I found a free program “IP Watcher” which emails and texts me when the IP address changes and gives me the new address. You just change that part of the link and it works again. I hope this will be helpful to some of you.

Sounds like Comcast has finally fixed their problems with enabling port forwarding with their routers. I gave up long ago trying to make it work, which is why I simply made the Comcast modem a bridge and use my own router. It took Comcast completely out of the picture, and gives me complete control of everything with my router. Since I do have the tech knowledge, it's important for me to have that level of control.

Since very few residential customers will have a static public IP address (although it might be something you can add for a fee), using something like IP Watcher does make it easier to find out your home IP address. But there's an easier way, and it's called Dynamic DNS service. You run a program in the background on a computer inside your network (some routers will even support the process without needing a computer running it) and it detects when your IP address changes. You use a public domain name that is tied to your IP address, and when your address changes the DNS service takes care of redirecting your domain name to the new address. I use a company called DNSExit.com that offers this for free. But there are a number of free and paid DDNS services. As mentioned, some of the major ones will work directly with your router.

Here's a recent list of the best free DDNS services. The company I use isn't listed there, but I've been using them for close to two decades without a problem. But there's plenty out there.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-best-dy ... ree-today/