Cisco 800 Open Ports

[biogenicmonkey]

The company I work for works in partnership with a telecom provider. They send out Cisco 800 managed routers that we don't have any admin access to. 

We have requested on numerous times that they port forward traffic to internal IP addresses for CCTV systems for remote use.

They have responded that they are unable to configure the router to do this without a source IP address. If this is the case then surely we won't be able to use these for any VPN connections as the external IP address is going to be different for each device.

I was wondering if anybody on here would be able to give me any advice or clue as to what I can go back and tell them, otherwise the router will effectively be useless in these situations!

I have looked through other forum posts but can't seem to find what I'm looking for, so apologies if this has already been asked!

Thanks in advance.

[Jon Marshall]

I'm not sure where the VPN comes in but for port forwarding to internal IPs then they should not need to know the source IPs. 

They need to know the destination IPs obviously to setup the NAT. 

Jon

[biogenicmonkey]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for the reply. I didn't think they would need to know the source, just the internal like you say - and the port number.
Unfortunately they don't give any explanation and state that it's simply not possible to forward a port without a source IP.
That or they have to disable all security and have the Cisco act as a modem so we then have to install a second router and configure this to port forward.
Best Regards,
Chris

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

I don't know the full setup but I'm not sure why they would need to disable all security ie. you can still filter what traffic is allowed in and use port forwarding at the same time. 

Difficult to say more at the moment. 

Jon

[biogenicmonkey]

Thanks again Jon,
I'll press them for more information and hopefully get them to accommodate!
Chris