Setting up a Web Server with BSNL AONT 100C Modem & TP Link Router

newbie2902 · Mar 1, 2020

Good Morning everybody; this forum seems to be having a lot of information on networking in India. Great place for knowledge sharing and thank you members for making this forum such a wonderful & useful place.

We have an FTTH connection from BSNL and they have placed an Alphion AONT-100C modem. Since this modem doesn't have wifi feature, we have added a TP-Link router and connected many computers through wifi. Everything was fine until now when we want to use one of the computer in the network as a web server which has to be made accessible from public. Looked out for many tutorials online and tried our best with no success. So, please help with our situation.

EXISTING SETUP:
Modem: Alphion AONT-100C
LAN IP: 192.168.1.251
WAN IP: Dynamic
Connection Type: PPPoE
DHCP: Enabled

Router: TP-Link
LAN IP: 192.168.0.1
WAN IP: 192.168.1.127 (Dynamic)
Connection type: Wireless router
Connection in: LAN cable through WAN port from AONT modem
Connection out: Wifi and LAN ports

Web server machine: HP Workstation
LAN IP: 192.168.0.105
Listening to port: 80
Allow access: all

We tried two methods:
METHOD-1
Enabled DMZ (firewall settings) in BSNL modem with host 192.168.0.1 (TP-Link router) and port forwarded to 192.168.0.105 in the TP-Link router. Incoming public traffic is routed to BSNL modem admin page.

METHOD-2
Made the TP-Link router as an Access Point with IP 192.168.1.1 and assigned web server machine with IP 192.168.1.105, both having gateway as 192.168.1.251 which is the BSNL modem. Enabled port forwarding in BSNL modem to point to 192.168.1.105 (80 port). Incoming traffic is still routed to BSNL modem admin page.

We also tried with some different ports instead of 80, which didn't work either. Please help.

Manoj Mathew · Mar 2, 2020

Good! By BSNL isp, do you mean from network connected behind this Alphion, or from a completely separate network connected through another piece of eqpt with different BSNL public ip? If it's the second case, that shouldn't happen, maybe BSNL is blocking something internally. If within the same network, you can always use private ip or point the same public domain to the private ip via hosts entry (on the machine or router).

newbie2902 · Mar 2, 2020

@Manoj Mathew @varkey thank you very much both for all the help 🙂

We checked and it is not getting accessed from the network behind our Alphion where port forwarding is done. As there are many other Alphion in our block, we checked and are able to access the local server through wanip😛ort from network behind other Alphion devices. From other ISP like Airtel, Jio, Vodafone it is working without issues. So this situation is due to hairpinning as varkey rightly mentioned and the solution for this is mentioned by Manoj.

Finally, it is a happy ending; thank you for all who helped us and to the forum as well. Hope this thread will help someone who are in the same situation as we were 🙂

newbie2902 · Mar 23, 2020

Just an update 🙂

Port forwarding can be done to any port in BSNL Alphion AONT 100C through the TP-Link (in this case) to a local machine on the TP Link network.

The key in our case was to adjust the Windows Firewall Settings on the local server machine to properly handle inbound traffic the way we wanted. Now, we are able to access the local machine's web server on port 80 and MSSQL server on port 1433 (both of which are the default ports) through wanip of the AONT modem.

Manoj Mathew · Mar 23, 2020

Always better to forward high non standard ports on WAN side as attackers use automated scan tools across ip ranges for standard ports such as 80, 3389, 1433 etc and then target machines with those open ports for further vulnerability assessment. If you check logs you are likely to observe access to your machine from ips abroad, mostly from China and former Soviet block.

newbie2902 · Mar 23, 2020

Thank you @Manoj Mathew

We indeed have planned to open high non default/standard ports while pushing the machine for production. However, we are still testing the possibilities with remote access and restricting IP ranges etc. during which we accidentally found that default ports can also be forwarded with the BSNL AONT modem. Thought to add a note regarding this thinking it might be useful.

Because, when we initially started this thread, we were under the impression that BSNL AONT 100C modem is limiting our inbound traffic but that is not the case. We are now a fan of this very simple BSNL AONT modem 🙂

Setting up a Web Server with BSNL AONT 100C Modem & TP Link Router

newbie2902

Manoj Mathew

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Manoj Mathew

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