Hello
I have a Peplink surf Soho router and I checked my WAN security on grc.com.
Ports 135 and 445 are responding as closed. From within the browser administration page for the router, please explain just how do I turn this into a stealth system instead of seeing these two ports respond as closed?
Thank you,
geo
They should be stealthed. Try testing each port individually with the user specified custom port probe. Also, make sure you are not connected to TOR or a VPN.
If they are really just “Closed”, then check for port forwarding in the router.
I used GRC.COM to probe these two ports individually and I got the same results.
I don’t use TOR or anything else like that, nor do I use a VPN. The usage is just for ordinary home use. My wife wanted me to get a good secure router after seeing something on the evening news about home router security, that is why I got the Peplink router.
So I’m surprised why these two ports are responding as “closed”.
I don’t know how to close them though. There’s nothing in the administrative control panel for the router which says “Here is where you can close ports”.
I don’t work in this field of technology, I’m retired, so I would appreciate some advice.
Thank you,
geo
EDIT: I rechecked it after performing the steps below. I’m still having the same issue. I’m not sure why this is occurring. Help?
geo
Previously:
I think I have it solved now.
For the last year or so, I was hosting a very simple HTML website for some of my wife’s old school pictures off of a Raspberry Pi. It was suitable for the task.
I’ve since let the domain name expire and I did shut off port forwarding for port 80 in the router (I know enough to do that). But the Raspberry Pi remained on and connected to the router. I had forgotten about it since it takes so little room.
I disconnected it and powered it off, now those two ports are closed. So something within Raspbian was keeping those two ports open.
Thank you for your help,
geo
Go to the Advanced tab, then click on Port Forwarding in the left side vertical column.
Disable or delete any port forwarding rules you find there.
Also, on the same page, make sure that both UPnP and NAT-PMP are disabled.
No port forwarding services are enabled (“No services defined”).
UPnp and NAT-PMP are both disabled.
When I go to grc.com and click “All service ports” to test, sometimes it yields all Green, then if I test it again immediately afterwards, ports 135 and 445 will sometimes respond as closed, yielding a Blue result.
If I click on “Common ports” this is where I may see more instances of these two ports responding as closed.
It’s all nutty.
At this point, I would have to assume the problem is not with your router but with your ISP.
To verify this, you can connect the Peplink router to a different ISP using either a 4G antenna in the USB port, or, the WiFi as WAN feature. If you have a smartphone, make it into a hotspot and then use WiFi as WAN to connect the router to the phone hotspot.
To be 100% sure the problem is not the router, you would have to disconnect it, plug its WAN port into the LAN port of another router and then from that LAN do an NMAP scan of the WAN port of the router. Perhaps you know a nerd or two?
Ok thanks for your help. I’ll try to see what I can figure out.
If it helps any, my ISP here in Ontario is Rogers.
geo