Ubee EVW32C port forwarding help

wiredcanyon94 said:The local IP for that drive is 192.168.0.1 because it’s plugged directly into the router.
To be more precise, though, the drive doesn't have its own IP address. It just has a shared folder named "sharea."
Shares don't carry their own IPs; you access them via the host they're attached to.

If I were him, I’d plug the drive into a computer on the network instead, share it from there, and then set up port forwarding on the router to point to that PC. If that works, then the issue is likely that the router can't (or isn't configured to) forward ports from the outside world back to itself.

I've shared drives like that before, though not quite that direct. I usually set up SSH access to internal drives—basically hitting the internal "hosts" where the storage lives. I've never actually plugged a drive straight into a router; it's always been to "something inside the local network." Honestly, I'm not even sure if that's a thing you can do. Haven't tried it.

There is honestly no way to connect it directly to the router like that—it just doesn't make any sense at all.

If it's just a local drive attached to a host, then there's absolutely no need for port forwarding. 🤔

Kenneth Cruz67 said:There is honestly no way to connect it directly to the router like that—it just doesn't make any sense at all.

If it's just a local drive attached to a host, then there's absolutely no need for port forwarding. 🤔

Well, if you look at the very first sentence of the OP, he clearly mentions plugging the drive straight into the router.

wiredcanyon94 said:Well, if you look at the very first sentence of the OP, he clearly mentions plugging the drive straight into the router.

I mean, I was originally under the impression that we were talking about some kind of network drive, but if it really is plugged straight into the router, then I suppose it would have to have its own IP address, wouldn't it?🤔

Kenneth Cruz67 said:I mean, I was originally under the impression that we were talking about some kind of network drive, but if it really is plugged straight into the router, then I suppose it would have to have its own IP address, wouldn't it?🤔

My bet? It's just a USB external drive hooked up to the router.

wiredcanyon94 said:My bet? It's just a USB external drive hooked up to the router.

That seems totally plausible! Honestly, that whole setup sounds so incredibly silly to me that I've probably never even bothered to try it myself.

If that’s the case, wouldn't it be absolutely easy? I mean, you could just fire up an FTP server right on the router and call it a day, without having to deal with any of that annoying port forwarding 🤔

Kenneth Cruz67 said:That seems totally plausible! Honestly, that whole setup sounds so incredibly silly to me that I've probably never even bothered to try it myself.

If that’s the case, wouldn't it be absolutely easy? I mean, you could just fire up an FTP server right on the router and call it a day, without having to deal with any of that annoying port forwarding 🤔

Yeah, within the local network, sure. But he wants to access that drive from outside the house. I'm not even sure if his router supports that kind of setup.

I haven't actually messed around with that either. Most people probably don't want to leave their private hard drives wide open to the entire internet, so it's likely not a standard feature. Who knows, though.

wiredcanyon94 said:Yeah, within the local network, sure. But he wants to access that drive from outside the house. I'm not even sure if his router supports that kind of setup.

I haven't actually messed around with that either. Most people probably don't want to leave their private hard drives wide open to the entire internet, so it's likely not a standard feature. Who knows, though.

It seems like it might be possible, though! I was actually just looking at my own home setup—this old junker router from Xfinity I have lying around—and it has a built-in media server and an FTP server. I managed to get it all configured in maybe two minutes, and now I can access everything from my phone without any trouble at all. 🤣

But honestly, I feel like using a setup like that is a bit of a silly idea unless you're just looking for something incredibly easy and don't mind being a little reckless. 👍

Yeah, look—the drive is plugged via USB directly into the router, which is already set up with Samba, FTP, and a media server to handle sharing everything over the network. Setting up local shares like that is usually just a matter of clicking a few buttons in the settings.
I honestly don't get why anyone would call that setup "stupid." To me, spending extra cash on a dedicated NAS or even a Raspberry pi just to do what I can already do with the gear sitting right in front of me seems like the real waste—plus, I don't even want to deal with the extra power draw from adding another host to my setup.

@wiredcanyon94, yeah, plugging the drive into a PC and trying to access it remotely is a solid way to test things out. Though, I guess that still doesn't technically prove whether the drive attached to the router will work or not—maybe it just needs a specific tweak in the config.

@Kenneth Cruz67, are you actually trying to use your phone over the local network?

The only thing going on this drive is my music library, and its sole purpose is streaming to my phone while I'm out and about. I'm still genuinely trying to wrap my head around why people think this approach is bad—what am I actually losing here? What kind of "danger" am I even facing by doing it this way?

shadowviper12 said:Yeah, look—the drive is plugged via USB directly into the router, which is already set up with Samba, FTP, and a media server to handle sharing everything over the network. Setting up local shares like that is usually just a matter of clicking a few buttons in the settings.
I honestly don't get why anyone would call that setup "stupid." To me, spending extra cash on a dedicated NAS or even a Raspberry pi just to do what I can already do with the gear sitting right in front of me seems like the real waste—plus, I don't even want to deal with the extra power draw from adding another host to my setup.

@wiredcanyon94, yeah, plugging the drive into a PC and trying to access it remotely is a solid way to test things out. Though, I guess that still doesn't technically prove whether the drive attached to the router will work or not—maybe it just needs a specific tweak in the config.

@Kenneth Cruz67, are you actually trying to use your phone over the local network?

The only thing going on this drive is my music library, and its sole purpose is streaming to my phone while I'm out and about. I'm still genuinely trying to wrap my head around why people think this approach is bad—what am I actually losing here? What kind of "danger" am I even facing by doing it this way?

It works on my phone through the cellular data, but whenever I'm on the local network, it always kicks me back to the router login screen because there's no loopback support.

But hey, look, it only actually works using the FTP protocol 🤣

And man, it is incredibly slow.

Plus, it won't work with USB 3.0

It won't even recognize thumb drives larger than 8GB

There isn't enough juice to spin up an external hard drive, so it only works with a basic flash drive.

But then again, that's just my crappy Xfinity router; you might actually have a higher-quality router than I do. 😁

So, here’s the real kicker—which one actually holds up better? My current setup handles big drives just fine, though I won't lie, the speed is pretty mediocre at best... but hey, it gives me both Samba and FTP options. But honestly, the dealbreaker for me is remote access. It’s definitely not some "plug and play" miracle. Seems like you win some, you lose some, right?
Are you saying you can only get in from outside by hitting the FTP port on your router's external IP? Like, you didn't even have to mess around with port forwarding or anything?

shadowviper12 said:So, here’s the real kicker—which one actually holds up better? My current setup handles big drives just fine, though I won't lie, the speed is pretty mediocre at best... but hey, it gives me both Samba and FTP options. But honestly, the dealbreaker for me is remote access. It’s definitely not some "plug and play" miracle. Seems like you win some, you lose some, right?
Are you saying you can only get in from outside by hitting the FTP port on your router's external IP? Like, you didn't even have to mess around with port forwarding or anything?

Exactly. I don't see why I would bother with port forwarding at all! I just define the mount point, enter the password and username, and everything just works.

So, I went ahead and shut down all the port forwarding on my router, but honestly, nothing seems to be working. I’ve tried hitting up my FTP—both standard and FTPS—as well as trying to reach my Samba shares via the public IP, but it's just a total dead end. Even when I tried testing with an anonymous login, it wouldn't budge... the ports aren't showing up as open at all. The weird thing is, if I try to ping the router, it actually responds, but that’s about the extent of the life I'm getting from it.

shadowviper12 said:So, I went ahead and shut down all the port forwarding on my router, but honestly, nothing seems to be working. I’ve tried hitting up my FTP—both standard and FTPS—as well as trying to reach my Samba shares via the public IP, but it's just a total dead end. Even when I tried testing with an anonymous login, it wouldn't budge... the ports aren't showing up as open at all. The weird thing is, if I try to ping the router, it actually responds, but that’s about the extent of the life I'm getting from it.

I wonder, are you seeing anything at all if you type your external IP directly into a web browser? You really should be seeing at least the router's login page if everything is working correctly. If that isn't popping up, then I guess there might be some kind of firewall somewhere just absolutely wrecking things for you.🤔

I'm getting absolutely nothing on my external IP from the router—just "site can't be reached" over and over again. I've already gone in and disabled the firewall on the router itself, and I've been going back and forth with Comcast, and they're swearing up and down that they don't have any FW enabled on their end... apparently, all the ports are wide open as far as they're concerned.

shadowviper12 said:I'm getting absolutely nothing on my external IP from the router—just "site can't be reached" over and over again. I've already gone in and disabled the firewall on the router itself, and I've been going back and forth with Comcast, and they're swearing up and down that they don't have any FW enabled on their end... apparently, all the ports are wide open as far as they're concerned.

Try running a port scan on that external IP from somewhere else. You know, actually testing it from outside your own network. See which ports are actually showing up as open.

So, I just ran an online port scanner and it’s telling me there isn't a single port open on my external IP. Honestly, I feel like someone is pulling my leg here. I’ve already disabled the FW on my router, and my ISP—Comcast—is insisting they have everything wide open on their end... I'm kind of at a loss, you know? Not sure where else to dig. I think I'm gonna give them another call just to have them double-check everything, because, frankly, I'm stumped.

shadowviper12 said:So, I just ran an online port scanner and it’s telling me there isn't a single port open on my external IP. Honestly, I feel like someone is pulling my leg here. I’ve already disabled the FW on my router, and my ISP—Comcast—is insisting they have everything wide open on their end... I'm kind of at a loss, you know? Not sure where else to dig. I think I'm gonna give them another call just to have them double-check everything, because, frankly, I'm stumped.

Well, that explains it; it looks like that USB interface isn't actually connected to the WAN side. I was browsing the Tom's Hardware forums earlier and saw that the older models didn't have this capability, so I suppose it seems this one doesn't either.

So, customer support is basically telling me it’s totally fine that no ports are showing up—they claim everything will magically appear once I set up port forwarding. But here’s the thing... I already ran some tests with forwarding turned off. I'm gonna dive back into testing that a bit later.

Kenneth Cruz67 said:Well, that explains it; it looks like that USB interface isn't actually connected to the WAN side. I was browsing the Tom's Hardware forums earlier and saw that the older models didn't have this capability, so I suppose it seems this one doesn't either.

Okay, so that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but shouldn't port forwarding actually fix that? Like, you open a port on the external IP and just pass everything hitting it through to the internal IP?
Does that mean your router handles things differently? Like, is the drive somehow exposed directly on the external IP?

Also, if this stuff is just hardcoded into the router and it won't let me use port forwarding on itself, then I might as well just go buy an extra device to handle it instead.

shadowviper12 said:So, customer support is basically telling me it’s totally fine that no ports are showing up—they claim everything will magically appear once I set up port forwarding. But here’s the thing... I already ran some tests with forwarding turned off. I'm gonna dive back into testing that a bit later.

Okay, so that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but shouldn't port forwarding actually fix that? Like, you open a port on the external IP and just pass everything hitting it through to the internal IP?
Does that mean your router handles things differently? Like, is the drive somehow exposed directly on the external IP?

Also, if this stuff is just hardcoded into the router and it won't let me use port forwarding on itself, then I might as well just go buy an extra device to handle it instead.

Are you absolutely sure you and customer support are even on the same page here? I mean, did you happen to mention to them that this isn't some fancy NAS setup, but just a simple USB drive without any kind of dedicated network card? There isn't really anything to forward when the router's IP and the USB's IP are essentially one and the same.

Okay, I suppose that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but wouldn't port forwarding be the actual solution to that? Like, wouldn't you just open a port on the external IP and then have everything hitting that port forwarded to an internal IP?

There isn't really anything to redirect if the drive is plugged directly into the router itself, because there isn't a separate internal IP to point to.

So, does that mean things work differently on your router? Is the drive actually exposed directly via the external IP?

Yes, exactly! So, when I type in my external IP, I get directed straight to my router's login page, assuming I'm browsing the web through that same router. However, if I try to access it from a completely different network, it actually sends me right to my server where Apache is running, since I've gone ahead and forwarded port 80. And if I try to connect via FTP using the external IP, it prompts me for a username and password and then opens up my USB drive just like that.

Additionally, if this functionality is just hardcoded into the router and it doesn't support port forwarding to itself, I guess I might need to pick up some extra hardware.

You could probably just grab a WD network drive, maybe something like a My Cloud, for roughly $100 to $500

https://www.amazon.com/products/detail...m_medium=click

shadowviper12 said:So, I just ran an online port scanner and it’s telling me there isn't a single port open on my external IP. Honestly, I feel like someone is pulling my leg here. I’ve already disabled the FW on my router, and my ISP—Comcast—is insisting they have everything wide open on their end... I'm kind of at a loss, you know? Not sure where else to dig. I think I'm gonna give them another call just to have them double-check everything, because, frankly, I'm stumped.

It’s not the ISP. You can prove that to yourself by trying to access something inside your own network from an outside connection—assuming you actually set up your port forwarding correctly, of course.
If that works, but what you're trying to do still fails, then the provider is definitely messing with something on their side.