TomatoUSB

Hi Folks,

I bought an ASUS RT-N16 which was horrible with the asus firmware … I was going to return the unit but after doing some research online realized my problems were software related not hardware. Long story short I was able to install the Tomato USB firmware on the router and almost all my issues were resolved … almost.

It seems I am unable to turn of the tomato firewall … and to be totally honest most of this stuff is way over my head. I try to sync my apple tv with itunes on my computer and I keep getting a "Check that any firewall software running on this computer has been set to allow communications on port 3689.". After hours of research and playing around I still cant get it to work … thus my post in the forums.

Is there a way to simply turn the firewall off? I have gone through the advanced features and tried to "open" a port but I have no idea if port forwarding is the same thing as actually opening a port up. Regardless whatever I have done hasnt fixed this issue and I can only think it was something to do with the firmware since it worked before the change?

Any ideas on how to resolve this issue?

Thanks,

David GS

Presumably both your atv and your computer are connected to your router on the LAN side, either wirelessly or wired, and not on the WAN side of the router. If so, then the router's firewall has nothing to do with your problem. It is most likely the firewall on your computer. Try turning that off first and see if it solves your problem. If so, then turn it back on and figure out how to open the port there. You did not say whether your computer is OS X or Windows but the port can be opened in either case.

Lol … once again I will probably come across as a bit of a tool but I have no idea what the difference is between WAN or LAN or how I would be able to tell. I wanted to make sure it wasnt the computer firewall before making this post and disabled the windows firewall and the issue was still there. I also went through the firewall setting and ensured iTunes was allowed regardless …

Oddly enough I ran a wired connection from the router to the ATV and it didnt work but when I unplugged the connection and it went back to wireless it started working again … at least for the moment.

Thanks for the insight though Karog … much appreciated.

When you don't understand terms like WAN and LAN the first thing to do is google them and learn something. It is worth it.

WAN is Wide Area Networking and LAN is Local Area Networking. Generally speaking, WAN is your connection to the internet and LAN refers to all of your local devices. Most consumer routers have one WAN port to connect to your internet connection modem and 4 wired LAN ports plus wireless which is also called WLAN for Wireless Local Area Networking. The router firewall is generally between the WAN port (the internet) and the LAN and WLAN (the local devices). So it does not play a role in paths between local devices like your computer and your atv unless you have an abnormal setup.

I have said generally above because some people have more than one router only one of which connects directly to the internet so it is possible to have configurations where your computer and atv are on separate sides of the WAN/LAN boundary of an internal router. Also, the firewall is built on a capability calles iptables which is a set of rules through which network packets are processed which can let a packet proceed unmodified, proceed but modified, or dropped altogether. Normally these are used for packets between WAN and LAN but some people add additional rules to accomplish other things and such rules can be written to affect LAN to LAN packets.