Zen Internet Support Forum

Hello all,
This is not the only forum i'm posting this on but I really am completely stumped by the problem.

I run an online game on one of my pc's (A txt based mud) it requires port forwarding of 3 tcp ports.

This game has been run for over 10 years and in all that time the best modem I ever found was a
Speedtouch 585v6, now my old one died a melt down about two years ago it was a rock and had
served me well.
(I know all about port forwarding its usually pretty simple set the ports and forward them to the
lan pc)
I tried to flash it with a new firmware, it seemed to work but no port forwarding for the mud
would work, I thought it was dead so I brought a brand new 585v6 worked perfectly except the ports
for the mud wouldn't work, no one from outside the server could get to it.

So I went to a lynksys wag 200 modem router, not very stable but port forwarding (no other changes
except plugging in a new adsl router) worked perfectly and I could access my game using the internet
ip.

It kept dropping the line, so I bought a billion router/modem I think its called once again port
forwarding perfect and I could access my mud via the internet ip.

it had issues lol

Bought a Netgear DG834 worked okay better than the linksys port forwarding working perfect,
able to access mud from internal ip and internet ip no problems.

Overheated too much.

Bought a business Netgear Prosafe DGFV338
Awesome piece of kit but still not as stable as my speedtouch was. exactly same port forwarding
working perfectly.

But I want to go back to my Speedtouch, this week I bought a Speedtouch 585V7 brand new.
Exact same problem as the 585V6 can get to my mud internal no problems but i can't reach it
via external ip and no one else can.


What have I tried?
Normal port forwarding
4 different network cards
entering the cli (command language interface) and completely disabling the firewall.

i've flashed to every firmware I could find

Maybe it isn't a port forwarding problem, maybe there is something the old old 585 did automatically like all these others that speedtouch changed.

I've tried everything I can think of, please can anyone help on this ?

Maybe adding static NAPT rules via the CLI would do the trick? Eg:

=>

nat mapadd intf=Internet type=napt mode=inbound outside_addr=123.123.123.123 inside_addr=192.168.1.123 outside_port=123 inside_port=123 protocol=tcp

I only suggest this because of the problems I had getting supreme commander to work online, despite supposedly having forwarded the correct ports - in the end I did something similar (although not exactly that command - I directly mapped an unused external IP to my local IP by changing the type to nat and leaving out outside_port, inside_port and protocol)