Port 1802 MacOS High Sierra Fios Quantum Gateway/Eero

[Red Quill]

Brand-new Fantasy Grounds "ultimate" subscriber here who intends to host his first D&D game since the Reagan era provided I can get past my first encounter: a failed "connection test."

After an hour of fruitless googling and fiddling, I'm here looking for help. I know precious little about networking (I was comfortable setting up an Eero mesh network by myself, but have only a rudimentary understanding of port forwarding).

- Worth noting: I'm using a Fios-supplied Quantum Gateway as a modem with the wireless radio turned off. My Eero is working as my wireless router. I asked a Verizon tech to put the Quantum Gateway in bridge mode but he did not know how. I'm getting a reliable 100Mbps connection.

- I have a paid encrypt.me VPN account. I've read that a VPN can be a good workaround for port forwarding trouble. I don't really know how to use it, though. I only use it when I'm on public WiFi.

- We have a gaming PC in the house that I built for my son. It's connected to the modem via ethernet because I didn't bother to install a WiFi module. Would I be better off running FG off that machine? (My son would then use my MacBook to connect as a player).

Any guidance?

[LordEntrails]

Hey TC, welcome to the forums.

I'm only responding because it's been a few hours since you posted. I'm competent at networking FG, but only on Windows machines. I'll see what advice I can give you, though anything Mac specific I will be ignorant of.

First, I would make sure you have no client side firewall or anti-virus blocking FG. Make sure your firewall and A/V have exceptions for FG (fantasygrounds.exe, fgupdater.exe, and a third one I'm not sure of).

If that doesn't solve it, and you go the port forwarding route, then you will have to port forward port 1802 on your Quantam to the IP of your Eero. (I'm not sure what bridge mode does) Then from your Eero you have to port forward to your Mac's IP. You should be able to find your devices on www.portforward.com and get device specific instructions.

I'm not familiar with encrypt vpn, but if it is like PureVPN (known to work if you select the dedicated IP option), you will need a dedicated IP address from them so that outside computers know how to reach you (unless Encrypt is like Hamachi which sets up a shared VPN nertwork with the clients). Note that only clients outside your network will need this external IP, and the Connection Test is only needed if you have clients outside your network (i.e. your son/other computer should use the internal IP).

[Red Quill]

Thanks for your assistance. It took a few hours and three calls to tech support, but I finally got up and running.

Short version:
- Set Fios Quantum Gateway to bridge mode with help from Verizon tech support.
- Used the eero app to open up port 1802 for my MacBook.
- Installed an ethernet hub after slowly figuring out that the ethernet cable running from the Quantum Gateway to my PC wasn't doing anything now that the QG was in bridge mode (I thought routers only routed wireless traffic. Yep, I'm that clueless about this stuff).

I hosted two players on line tonight for a couple of hours without issue.

[dberkompas]

Sweet, I love it when a plan comes together.


Dave

[damned]

Welcome Tatty - I was also elsewhere otherwise would have chimed in.
Plenty of old dinoasaurs around here