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Forum Discussion
ChocB
Jun 02, 2026Aspirant
Port forwarding allow other external ports on Orbi RBR850
I'm only forwarding one external port to internal port 22, however, the logs show various external ports forwarding to internal port 22. Those external ports have no entries in the "Port Forwarding ...
- Jun 04, 2026
ChocB wrote:
Someone is attempting to connect, for example, from 183.91.14.197 on 13722 which forwards to 10.0.0.134 on port 22 but the log may show a different external port so looks like someone connecting from 183.91.14.197 on 37529?
Someone was trying to connect from 183.91.14.197:13722 to <router ip>:22, and would therefore receive any replies on 183.91.14.197:13722
That same someone then tried again to connect from a different source port like 183.91.14.197:37529 And again, and again....
Nothing going wrong in the Orbi - it is doing exactly what you told it to do. That is to forward any inbound traffic with a destination port of 22 to 10.0.0.134.
A flood of requests suggests that these attempts were not successful - perhaps because they were attempting to guess the admin password, and didn't get it right. But still, using a VPN to connect instead of forwarding the port is a more secure approach.
StephenB
Jun 02, 2026Guru - Experienced User
ChocB wrote:I'm only forwarding one external port to internal port 22, however, the logs show various external ports forwarding to internal port 22.
IP packets contain a source port and destination port.
The "from" port numbers are the source ports. The connection request from 183.91.15.197 is going to port 22. The destination (10.0.0.134) responds by sending a packet back to the source (37529, etc). KevinLiT is calling them "listener ports" because the source is listening on that port for the response.
Do you recognize the source? Does the destination server (10.0.0.134) have a strong password?