I am trying to setup remote access to HA so i can control and check devices and statuses when i am not home. I am following a YouTube video and is very clear on what i need to do. I have one question though. It says that i need to do some port forwarding.
In my case i have two routers. The one is an Arris provided by my ISP and a TP Link that i have some devices connected via WiFi and ethernet. I have no devices connected to the Arris (ISP Router) apart from the TP Link that “distributes the internet” in the whole house.
Based in this setup, in which device do i need to do the port forwarding ? ISP router, TP Link router or both ?
Both, you rorward the port from your ISP router to your TP link router and then from your TP link router to the machine running Home Assistamt (or the reverse proxy, don’t know your setup).
The best way to understand this is that both devices have a router built into them. The purpose of a router is to take things coming in from the Wide Area Network and send them to the appropriate device on the Local Area Network and the reverse back out.
In the case of your Arris, the WAN is the Internet and the LAN is simply feeding the information to your TP Link router. In the case of the TP Link router, the WAN is the feed from the Arris and the LAN is all your devices.
So, yes, you have to port-forward from the device to the TP Link router and also port-forward from the TP Link router to the Arris in order for the forwarding to get from your device all the way out to the Internet and back in in reverse.