I have FreedomBox installed on a Raspberry pi 4 connected through LAN to my Bell Fiber router…It was properly configured and I was able to communicate with the router and Element chat client while on my home network as well as allowing outside traffic via the registered domain but as of this morning I cannot connect from outside networks like cell phone data, however devices such as my PC connected over wifi can still connect.
What could have changed in the past 24 hours to not allow access from outside traffic? No settings were changed…I have been troubleshooting this and figured I would ask for some help.
Check the error message when entering your freedombox domain in the browser (within the internal network and from an outside internet connection).
Note, the extenal IP, and thus the public domain name, can only work internally if the router readily supports this, or is configured to do some redirecting or forwarding. Not sure how this routing feature is named.
Check the IP that gets returned for the dynamic DNS entry of your domain: host <your-freedombox-domain-name>
Router:
Is the port forwarding configuration correct and (still) there?
Manual port forwarding or opening can conflict with a “DMZ Host” setting. Try only one at a time.
Check the current external IP of your router in its configuration interface. This is the IP that must get returned for the public dynamic DNS entry above.
If not, it could be the IP is old and dns updating is not working, or that it points to yet another involved party, a Carrier-grade-NAT.
Carrier-grade network address translation (CGN or CGNAT)
To be honest I am so out of my element here (no pun intended) that I believe it could be a number of issues but let me start by answering your questions…
Name Resolution
When I connect to my freedombox on my home network (over wifi) I do not have any issues: on PC when I enter the domain it takes me to the server page, same with iPhone over wifi…When I go to iPhone over data I get a server timeout…However at the time I made the original thread I was unable to access the server over LTE (data)
The IP address of the dynamic DNS entry is the IP address of the Freedom Box (more on this later) as per GnuIP
I spoke to my ISP and they said all Residential connections use dynamic IP and I would need to sign up for a business account for a static IP address (if I need one)
Router
I have the Freedom Box set under DMZ in my router configuration so, as to my understanding, all port forwarding is automatic
The IPv4 address of my Router is different than the IP address of my Freedom Box
Now here is a possible caveat: I do not have dynamic DNS enabled on my Freedombox; When I enable Dynamic DNS I notice the GnuDIP web client consistently changes the host IP of my freedombox domain to my PC’s IP every few minutes which prevents me from accessing the server…I have to continually change the IP back to the IP of my freedom box to restore functionality…If I turn off Dynamic DNS in FreedomBox I do not have this issue
I took a quick look at the link about solving Dynamic DNS problems and will do some tinkering if I cannot solve the issue in the meantime…if you have any further information it would be much appreciated
Well from speaking with the ISP and reading the responses I made a couple of adjustments…
They told me the external IP address of the router and that corresponds to the IP that shows up as my computers’ IP in the GnuDIP web interface…Either way I updated the domain to point at that address; they told me to enable advanced DMZ to allow the freedombox to share the IP with the WAN IP of the router (the same address as the computer that connected to GnuDIP) which I did…I manually opened port 80 & 443 so it could communicate and used canyouseeme.org to verify it was not being blocked…None of these resolved the issue.
I asked about the ipv4 versus ipv6 address and the ipv6 address is not a usable IP address, gnuDIP will not accept it due to syntax error (it is alphanumeric, not numeric)
As of right now, I have Dynamic DNS enabled on my FreedomBox, I have the domain name pointing to the external IP of my router, I have DMZ enabled and port 80 & 443 opened, but I cannot resolve the domain name
Ok, that makes sense now, if it’s referring to the same (extrnal) address.
I would try to disable the DMZ setting and use only the port forwarding to the internal IP of the freedombox. If the router conguration says “port opening” it may also not be “port forwarding”, it could just open the port at the router without forwarding.
I disabled DMZ and forwarded traffic from ports 80 & 443, more importantly I am beginning to understand some of the issues I am experiencing…Currently with dynamic DNS enabled and the gnuDIP pointing to my external router/modem IP address I can access my freedombox & element messenger, just not on any devices on my internal network (wifi via PC & iPhone)…This isn’t an issue per se as I can access the freedombox in my browser by using the internal IP of the Freedombox
I will update on progress once I can ensure remote devices can connect to the server in Element, as this is where I was originally experiencing an issue…Thank you so far for all the help!
Good. The extenal IP, and thus your public domain name, can only work internally if your router readily supports this, or is configured to do some redirecting or forwarding. Not sure how this feature is named, though.
So as an update I was able to use Tor Browser to access my freedombox via my registered domain; It appears the real problem was with Element Messenger…The main problem outside devices people have been experiencing trying to connect to my chat server is getting an error when attempting to register an account with my freedombox domain as my home server…However since turning off DMZ and forwarding the ports as well as properly setting up the dynamic DNS & changing the dynamic IP to the external IP of the router has solved the connection issues
It may have been a configuration issue on my end; I was under the impression the dynamic IP would have to point to the freedombox and not to the router’s external IP…Once I manually changed it, gnuDIP would revert back to the external IP after about five minutes; I was able to stop it from reverting back by turning off Dynamic DNS in my freedombox configuration…However after speaking with you and troubleshooting with a VPN & cellular data I noticed there was no issue pointing the gnuDIP to my router on connections outside my internal network…So I turned Dynamic DNS back on in freedombox, turned off DMZ and opened ports 80 & 443 on my router, let gnuDIP point the domain to the external router IP, and I have experienced no further issues thusfar
To get users to sign onto my matrix server I simply have them sign up for an account using my freedombox domain url (example.freedombox.rocks) and then I can manually add them to my room(s)