NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
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.
ChocB
Jun 04, 2026Aspirant
Ok, I'm getting strange behavior with this forum website. Cannot post response directly to StephenB so posting below. Was not able to attach screenshots as it eternally says "Media upload in progress. Try again in a few months" despite trying it 5min, 30min and 60min later.
I was not able to find any entries in the Orbi log for port 13722 but then maybe it's so early in the logs that I no longer have.
Ok that makes sense now, 183.91.14.197:13722 originally got a response from my system that it was open, then it proceeded to try all other possible ports, during which time I noticed.
Although, I have a good password and only allow SSH on that device open to port 13722, it an an EOL ReadyNAS, so I think I will keep it offline until I can implement some sort of firewall at the router level. I'd rather block traffic there rather than pass it to internal network. Thanks for thought of VPN, I think the QNAP may have capability to do that.
Thanks StephenB