How to bypass Excitel (or any other isp) firewall and NAT

For nearly a year, I have been trying to find a way to punch through excitel's firewall to make my LAN accessible through WAN.

As Excitel uses carrier grade NAT to provide its services, we weren't able to access our home servers, cameras etc .

Recently, I found a software called ZeroTier One, it is an open source software which allows the user to create a Virtual Peer to Peer Network and bridge multiple networks. The magical thing is this software is able to traverse through the NAT and firewall like it's normal business.
This software allows you to create a virtual network and assign a local static IP to every one of your devices which can then be accessed from WAN if you login. It can do this and punch through NAT at the same time without any need for port forwarding from your or ISP side.

Here is how you set it up:

1. Go to www.zerotier.com/download.shtml and download the software for your phone or computer and install it.

2. Create a new virtual network on my.zerotier.com and set the network to public. It can be set to private if you want to manually allow the devices.

3. Copy the network ID from my.zerotier.com and paste it into the zerotier software you just downloaded and connect.

Now all the devices are on same network and can communicate directly with each other.

Heres what I tested out:
1. Parsec and NVIDIA Gamestream works flawlessly with minimum latency.

2. I turned ICMP Echo on my PC on Excitel and it pinged perfectly fine with my 4G Network from outside the LAN.

3. PLEX servers work fine as well from outside LAN with zerotier.

The software is free and open source and supports up to 100 devices and even more if you are willing to pay.

 

[Rohan Chawla]

I am in the same boat as you but zerotier dowsnt solves the issue for me I still cant access plex from outside the network. What am I doing wrong??

 

[Sidharth P]

Can you see the server and the files?
Please send me a screenshot of zerotier window.
Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot this issue:
Network related:

1. Put your PLEX Server on DMZ
2. Disable the windows firewall temporarily
3. Assign static IP to all machines on the LAN using Static IP setting or DHCP Reservation, I usually prefer the latter.

On my.zerotier.com :
1. Disable auto assign from range setting for both ipv4 and ipv6 .

Source

2. Assign IP addresses manually let's say 172.29.0.10 for server and 172.29.0.20 for Client. This is done by typing in the IP address and clicking on + sign

Source


3. Enable Network bridging by clicking on the spanner next to your Server .

Source


4. If you are on android make sure that the key notification appears on top.

On PLEX:
1. Try opening your Plex server from browser on WAN with the IP address you manually assigned earlier.

Source


2. Try playing videos to see if it works.

I'll put some screenshots soon

 

[Rohan Chawla]

Thanks for the screenshots.
I finally got plex working.
Thanks a lot.

 

[Sidharth P]

No problem. For better security I would recommend the following:

1. Set your Zerotier network access to "Private" after setting it up. If you want to add more machines, you can manually authenticate it from my.zerotier.com .

2. Enable Windows Defender and Firewall which you disabled earlier for troubleshooting . Usually this isn't a problem since ZeroTier creates an exception.

3. Instead of putting your machine on DMZ you could instead forward port 9993 (Both TCP and UDP) on your router. This isn't that big of a problem since you are already behind a carrier grade NAT but it'll make the network more secure.

 

[FujiwaraTofu]

This has to be installed on both the mobile and desktop devices right? Suppose I want to acess my desktop from outside then both the desktop and mobile device should be on the same zerotier network?

 

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[Sidharth P]

Yep, both the devices must be on the same Zerotier network. Zerotier is on Windows, Linux , iOS, Mac and can be installed as add-on on most NAS.

 

[FujiwaraTofu]

Yeah, I just tried it with plex and it works great. Still trying to understand how it works though. Good find!

 

[Anil]

seems intresting

 

[Deleted member 63558]

1. Put your PLEX Server on DMZ

How to do that?

 

[JB701]

.

 

[varkey]

I just wanted to share that ZeroTier is super cool. You just install it and it works automagically. I have pretty much all my networks connected via ZeroTier and I can access them wherever I am and not worry about NAT or dynamic DNS etc etc. It just works!

If you have an OpenWRT device, you could install the ZeroTier client on the router itself and maybe use that as a gateway to avoid having to install the client on other devices on the network. (Just need to adjust the routes accordingly)

 

[krishna1997]

thank you were my saviour now ive able to access plex,rdp and much more without portforwarding

 

[Vickey007]

is this help us to get speed on public and private trackers as well? or it's just to monitor same network ?