I'm having such a bloody ridiculous hard time trying to open just a few ports on my router.  I'm doing everything by the book, I've watched Youtube videos, I'm consulting with friends, and they all think I'm doing things the right way.

I have a TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750 Dual-Band router and I simply cannot get port forwarding to work properly!  My router isn't even 2 years old!  Why is this so difficult?  After I set the open port, (e.g. 1221, requests for SAM Broadcaster), that port should be open to the public, but it isn't.  Neither is 8000, 8001 (the listening port), 3306 - MySQL, and a few others but none of them seem to work, EXCEPT port 80 for www.

I have upgraded the firmware with the Canadian upgrade file, so I'm at the latest version.  If this is causing the problem, if I use the Restore to Factory defaults, does this firmware upgrade still in effect?  I really don't want to reset it to factory standards.

Anyone else want to help shed some light on this with me?  Is there a way I can downgrade the firmware update, just in case this is the cause?

Thanks