Port forwarding on TELUS NH20A

In the home internet installation provided by TELUS, the most obvious box is a cylindrical drum labeled "Boost Wi-Fi 6." This is not the router. This is simply a Wi-Fi access point. You can find your default Wi-Fi SSID and Wi-Fi password by lifting the Boost drum out of its base. Although the label gives an admin password, this is not the password for your router. It is only for logging on to the Boost. You can change your SSID and password if you log on to this device (although it's probably easier to do it in the TELUS Connect mobile app.) You cannot set up port forwarding from the Boost.

To set up port forwarding, you need to log on to the router. This is a square box called the "Network Access Hub." This is a router model NH20A manufactured by a Taiwanese company called Arcadyan. By gently removing the lid from the NH20A, you'll see a label giving the IP address and password to log on to the router. Then you can log on to the NH20A like this:

  1. On any computer on your LAN, open a browser.
  2. Navigate to http://192.168.1.254 (or whatever your router's IP address is).
  3. Log in using the router's admin id and password.
  4. From the menu on the left, select Network.
  5. From the menu across the top, select Firewall, then select Port Forwarding.

Now you can set up your port forwarding rules.

Router firewall

As well as setting up port forwarding, you must also open the firewall on the router (Firewall > Firewall). The router firewall has a number of preset rules that can be enabled or disabled. It doesn't seem to be possible to define new rules apart from these presets. For example, you can't arbitrarily say you want to open the firewall for precisely port udp/1194 and no other ports.

NameDefinition
WWWHTTP, TCP Port 80, 3128, 8000, 8001, 8080
E-mail SendingSMTP, TCP Port 25
News ForumsNNTP, TCP Port 119
E-mail ReceivingPOP3, TCP Port 110
Secure HTTPHTTPS, TCP Port 443
File TransferFTP, TCP Port 21
Telnet ServiceTCP Port 23
AIMAOL Instant Messenger, TCP Port 5190
NetMeetingH.323, TCP Port 1720, 1503
DNSUDP Port 53
SNMPUDP Port 161, 162
VPN-PPTPTCP Port 1723
VPN-L2TPUDP Port 1701
All Other PortsAll Undefined Ports

Testing

You can test that port forwarding works as follows:

  1. Press Win+r, type appwiz.cpl in the Run box, and click OK.
  2. In the Programs and Features window, click Turn Windows features on or off.
  3. Check the box for Internet Information Services, and click OK.
  4. Press Win+r, type inetmgr in the Run box, and click OK.
  5. In the IIS Manager, expand the Connections tree in the left pane, and select the Default Web Site.
  6. In the Actions pane on the right, click Browse *:80 (http).
  7. Check that your default browser opens at http://localhost and displays the default Internet Information Services start page from C:\inetpub\wwwroot\iisstart.htm.
  8. On your Windows PC, open a command prompt, and issue the command ipconfig. Note your computer's IP address on the LAN (e.g. 192.168.1.68).
  9. Now log on to your NH20A router.
  10. Select Network on the left, then Firewall > Firewall on the top.
  11. Set Firewall Features to User Defined, enable traffic IN on HTTP TCP Port 80 input, and click Save settings.
  12. Navigate to Firewall > Port Forwarding.
  13. Add a rule forwarding public port tcp/80 to private port tcp/80 on your Windows PC's LAN IP address, and click Save settings.
  14. Ask a search engine, "What is my IP address?" and from one of the results pages, note down your public IP address.
  15. Finally, visit a cafe with free Wi-Fi and test browsing to your public IP address. You should see the default Internet Information Services start page. Alternatively you can just visit http://YOUR.PUBLIC.IP.ADDRESS from a proxy site such as https://hide.me/en/proxy. In either case you should see the default Internet Information Services start page.

Remember to close the firewall and delete the port forwarding rule once you're done testing.

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