Unable to Connect Remotely - Running on iMac

[geewaite]

I'm running Sighthound Video on an iMac with OS X 10.11.2. Using a browser on the same iMac, I can remotely connect using Local Address 127.0.0.1:8848 and Internal Address 192.168.1.64:8848 and see the video stream.

I am unable to remotely connect from the iMac browser using the External Address [external_ip]:8848 reported by my router. Further, I'm unable to remotely connect from the Sighthound app on my iPhone 5c (on wi-fi) from Internal Address 192.168.1.64:8848 and the External Address [external_ip]:8848. However, if I completely turn off the Mac's firewall in System Preferences, I am able to connect and see the video stream from the External Addresses on the iMac and the Internal and External Addresses on the iPhone. Turn the firewall back on and the connections are lost.

In the Mac's Firewall Options, Sighthound Video.app shows "Allow incoming connections".
I also forwarded port 8848 on my router.

http://www.yougetsignal.com reports that Port 8848 is Closed when the Mac's firewall is On and Port 8848 is Open when the Mac's firewall is Off.

My understanding is that OS X only allows ports to be opened per Application and not by individual port number. As I mentioned above, Sighthound Video.app is allowing incoming connections. Is there a problem with Sighthound making the request to the Mac's firewall? Is there another way to open up the Mac's firewall to let connections through to Sighthound Video without turning the firewall off completely? I've read online that there are solutions to open ports using Terminal but it's very difficult and the instructions I've found are not complete.

[osuejm]

I have the exact same issue. It was working fine and then one day it all just stopped. I thought it was because I went from a cable internet service provider to a ATT Uverse. Apple said I had all the port forwarding correct and have no other internet issues, so its a software problem.

I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling previous version, no go. At this point I have started abandoning Sighthound until fixes come into play.

[osuejm]

Doing some more testing, I think a mac OS X update has caused a break in being able to use port 8848 without dropping the OS X firewall. I have seen some forum talks about other apps outside of this not working and people are trying to use terminal to open up the port. I have tried but not that savvy of a tech to figure it out.

My problem started sometime in November, so just not sure if the original El Capitan release caused the break or if a subsequent release caused the firewall to break. At least these are my findings.

[ryan]

Unfortunately the application based firewall that is included with OS X appears to have a number of bugs, which can cause traffic to applications to be inappropriately blocked. It's true that you can correct this with some recipes on the command line, but even these commands will not persist past a reboot.

Unfortunately as this isn't a bug in our software it isn't something we can address. The only options I can propose would be to consider whether you need this firewall enabled (your router is likely already filtering out all incoming traffic you haven't explicitly allowed) or if so considering an alternate firewall (a port-based firewall is often more desirable to those who actively want a firewall as well).