Cannot set up Anywhere Access on Windows Server through BT Business Hub 5

[stepotts]

My company runs a small server running Windows Server 2012 Essentials which we have connected up to the internet through a BT Business Hub 5. Our engineers need to access the Server Folders whilst out of the office, however all attempts to set up the Anywhere Access and Remote Web Access have failed, showing the below errors.

I have tried turning off UPnP in order to open access, and also have tried manually Port Forwarding for ports 80 and 443 amongst others, but whatever I seem to try I always end up with these error messages.

Has anyone else had these issues, and could possibly provide an alternative method to open up the router so that outside access to the server can be activated?

[spank]

Hi there,

The first error is to do with port forwarding.  Normally UPNP will open ports automatically but if this is disabled then you will have to open them manually.  BT doesn't block any ports so it's not the ISP as the error suggests.  Go into the router firewall settings and assign the predefined rules HTTP and HTTPS to your server.

The second error advises that it looks like you have two devices giving out IP addresses.  If the server is trying to set itself up to do this then it's probably detecting that the router is doing the same.  By default the router will give out IP addresses (DHCP).  Most server setups require that this feature is disabled.

You could try disabling DHCP on the router, but be aware that if I'm wrong this could mean nothing will get an IP.  To get around this temporarily for testing manually assign a laptop or PC with the router IP settings so you can access it and turn DHCP back on if need be.

If both server and the router are doing DHCP then port forwarding will not work as it will never be able to determine the correct gateway.  Not only that your internet will be exceptionally slow and sporadic.

Thanks

[stepotts]

Thanks for your response.

I have tried these fixes, disabling the DHCP on the router has cleared 2 of the errors, but the UPnP error still comes up even with ports 80 and 443 open and with HTTP and HTTPS assigned to the server. 

[spank]

Hi there,  I'd just skip the upnp error and continue through.

Go to http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/port-scan/ and choose port 80 and 443, if the response is in red then it should work.

Thanks