rotorglow's profile

Visitor

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11 Messages

Wednesday, May 14th, 2025 9:15 PM

UPNP keeps getting turned off every couple of days. How to leave on permanently?

Starting 4-5 months ago in late 2024 or early 2025, UPNP ("device discovery") on both of the XB8 modems I manage started being invisibly turned off without warning every few days.  Not after a power failure or after a modem restart, just randomly, in the middle of the day or night, every few days (or often as daily).  Modems exhibiting the behavior are in two entirely different regions (Boston, PHL). This causes great difficulty for remotely managing computers for aging parents, and for remote management and gaming for myself.  There are several other recent complaints about this new problem in these forums and on Reddit, but nobody has provided a solution.  Changing UNPNP advertisement time makes no difference (so far).

How can I keep UPNP on permanently?  Please note: I do not need to be directed to the support page for turning UPNP on.  I am very much aware about how to turn it on, now that I have to do it several times a week.  

What I would like is specific information about why UPNP started being turned off starting a few months ago, and by whom, and how to keep it on permanently.  Does Comcast know this is happening?  Is Comcast doing it on purpose?  If so, why?  Is it a bug in the modem firmware that's been pushed to XB8 modems?  Is there a fix on the way?   Is there a magic value for advertisement time that would keep UPNP enabled?  

If port forwarding is the only workaround for this new and undesirable behavior, I'll do that as a last resort.

Visitor

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11 Messages

10 hours ago

No info on this problem?

Contributor

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23 Messages

9 hours ago

I don’t use it myself, so no experience with it. But, I’m guessing it’s not something that the system defaults want you doing indefinitely, and that’s why it reverts automatically. I know of a few other settings that operate the same way, annoyingly. 

The Admin Portal (10.0.0.1) has been effectively neutered for us power users, unfortunately. 


The only settings they actually want us to be able to modify, are in the Xfinity app. Tap on the WiFi tab at the bottom, then tap “View WiFi equipment” followed by “Advanced settings.” It sounds like Port Forwarding on here is what you’ll need to implement. 

Visitor

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1 Message

You're probably right that they prefer it not be feature that people actually use, but it's critical for gaming, and there's an active support article that provides instructions for how to enable it via the admin portal, so it would be helpful if Comcast would make up its mind.  To say nothing of the fact that UPNP worked in the desired way for literally years up to now.

Expert

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110.4K Messages

9 hours ago

@rotorglow 

FWIW. You don't want to keep UPnP permanently enabled. It's a security vulnerability. Port forwarding is the way to go. It's considered by many in the industry to be more secure.

Visitor

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11 Messages

If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.  But it's also a pain.

Visitor

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11 Messages

In any case, silently and randomly ruining a feature that's existed for a long time is lame.

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