After bouts with CL and Actiontec tech support that led nowhere, I was able to figure out how to do port forwarding on the C1000A. The Actiontec user manual and CL guides were not useful at all. The Actiontec tech opens up by saying "we do not support port forwarding"; then, he said "you can only have one port forwarded." Clearly, the tech did not know what he was talking about; but, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I let him lead me to Application forwarding. When that did not seem to work, he was going to put my computer on the DMZ. At that point, I told him that he was not solving my problem at all, whereupon he simply dropped out of the call.
I have not seen recent posts on the topic which seems to suggest that the community has solved the problem or that they have simply given up because I see posts that suggest putting the modem on bridge mode and using another router behind it. I saw one post that talked about internal and external ports on the Q1000A, which is how I was able to make port forwarding work on the CL1000A. The key is where and what to enter on the C1000A GUI. In any case, as there is still obviously some confusion as to how to do port forwarding on the C1000A, I thought it might still benefit some users to post my experience doing so.
Firstly, as everyone may know, it would be helpful to reserve the IP address of the device. The default on the C1000A is automatic address reservation once connected, a nice feature. Find out what address is assigned to the device MAC by going to the Device Table under Modem Status. Then, go to Port Forwarding under Advanced Setup/Security. (You may want to go to DCHP Reservation under Advanced Setup/IP Addressing first to verify the device IP reservation.) Then, manually enter the IP address in the specified space; the listening port of the device (usually only one) in the starting and ending port spaces. Select TCP, UDP or both (or whatever you need in Protocol). In Step 4, all guides I have seen say select "All IP Addresses" which is not entirely wrong but it leads to the external and internal ports to be assigned to the same ports you specified in Step 2. I believe that this leads to the misconception that you can only have one port forwarded. In the case of Windows Remote Desktop Connection, the default listening port is 3389. If you change the listening ports in Windows, I find that (though I have not verified this) the modem will only see one port open for RDC. I believe (again, I have not really verified this) that the modem only opens the external port and the internal port remains blocked; so that you need the external and internal ports to be different. This is actually a nice security feature because the default ports (which is common knowledge) are not open.
Select the "Define IP Address" and enter the external port you want in the so-called Destination and Starting Ports. Leave the Remote IP Address blank. When you click on Apply, your entry may not even appear immediately; you may have to get out of the Port Forwarding or even reboot the modem.
I have not tested if the modem port itself (default to 443) can be forwarded.
I find that Port Forwarding on the C1000A is actually nicely done. There is no need to change the listening ports on your devices; no need to remember what they are when you are inside the LAN. The ports are increasingly being preassigned to the more numerous applications out there. It would be worthwhile to check periodically if your selected ports are assigned to or hijacked by an application.
I hope this helps someone out there.
C1000A/CAC001-31.30L.8
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