Arlo base station not connecting to internet

[The-rangis]

Hi there,

My arlo base station will not connect with my internet. the station flashes amber repeatedly. 

I have gotten in contact with Arlo themselves and they say that port 80 and 443 need to be open but not sure how to open these. Have tried going to my internet provider but no luck.

Has anyone got any idea on how to open these ports? Any help will be greatly appreciated! 

[jguerdat]

Here's the meaning of the LEDs on the base:

https://kb.arlo.com/000039100/What-do-the-LEDs-on-my-Arlo-SmartHub-or-base-station-mean

Which one is flashing amber? Have you checked your router to see if an IP address is assigned to the base? Have you rebooted the router and base, in that order?

[PNelson]

the-rangis asked:

I have gotten in contact with Arlo themselves and they say that port 80 and 443 need to be open but not sure how to open these. Have tried going to my internet provider but no luck.

Has anyone got any idea on how to open these ports? Any help will be greatly appreciated! 

An internet search will tell you that port 80 and 443 are used for HTTP and HTTPS (this is secure HTTP).  What this means if you can open websites that use either of these protocols, then you likely do not need to do anything.  What you do NOT want to do is go into your router and mess with port forwarding because it creates a huge security risk.  Don't mess with port forwarding unless you really know what you are doing.

I have no idea why Arlo keeps giving out this bad advice when it is easy to test if these ports are working properly by going to a webpage or logging into an account which will use port 443 (https).   

Good luck.

[The-rangis · Accepted solution]

Finally after many calls to the internet provider, a tech from there who also knew the Arlo product was able to do the right testing of all connections and isolated the issue to our modem.  Full reset of the modem online and then manually and YAY the modem is now seeing the Arlo base and we are up and running again.  Nothing at all to do with port 80 & 443 too. Thanks for the help

[jguerdat]

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@PNelson wrote:

An internet search will tell you that port 80 and 443 are used for HTTP and HTTPS (this is secure HTTP).  What this means if you can open websites that use either of these protocols, then you likely do not need to do anything.  What you do NOT want to do is go into your router and mess with port forwarding because it creates a huge security risk.  Don't mess with port forwarding unless you really know what you are doing.

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While I agree that port forwarding is a security risk, it isn't HUGE such as not having a firewall. If nothing else, it's "security by obscurity" since the ports aren't hard-coded (AFAIK). A VPN is preferable but not all routers support that. As in so many things in life, "It depends" (TM).

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I have no idea why Arlo keeps giving out this bad advice when it is easy to test if these ports are working properly by going to a webpage or logging into an account which will use port 443 (https).   

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Not sure where you're going here. Opening ports for Arlo to work is needed but that's not the same thing as port forwarding to be able to access local recordings remotely. There have been various cases over the years of ISPs setting up their routers with something that blocks access to the Arlo servers, hence the need to verify that ports 80, 123 and 443 to arlo.com are open. Default setups don't cause this - it's due to someone changing settings for whatever reason.

[lpoulsen]

I got the same wrong and useless advice from Arlo support, when my Arlo VMB 3500 base station woild not pair to my account as represented by either my smartphone or a web browser.

The problem was that my local network is NOT behind a NAT (Network Address Translation) edge router. The pairing function apparently requires this. The way the two devices are determined to be "on the same network" is that when they connect to the cloud data center, they appears as coming from the same IP address.