NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RBR850 port troubles and how to do TCP port forwarding
I have 2 NAS and found their TCP ports are in some cases not showing up in the UPNP table on this router. Some do but others don't and oddly their seems to be no logical reason. NAS support says that is odd but no biggy just go into router an manually forward the ports to TCP. Problem is when I go to the Port Forwarding/Triggering Orbi page and set it to port forwarding, TCP is not an option to set up. I could set it up in a dozen other ways but not TCP. NAS support says that is really strange and has not idea how to fix it but says none of the options seem to be correct for TCP. AS step one in my quest to actually get my NASs to properly play with the Orbi router can someone explain how to either get its UPNP, which is on by the way, to recognize the NAS ports requests or how to forward these TCP ports?
I tried flushing DNS cache etc. which made no difference.
Thanks in advance and please remember my skills are at the preschool level when it comes to networking.
4 Replies
There are two types of network packets: TCP and UDP. Different protocols use one or the other. In addition, there is a number associated with each port.
On the Orbi web interface, Advanced Tab, select the item on the bottom row: Add Custom Service.
Notice the drop down menu where you select TCP, UDP, or both TCP/UDP
Since you have two NAS units, this will be a bit tricky because any particular port must forward to one device on the LAN.
What people often do is forward one external port to the expected port on one device and forward a different external port to the other device.
Hope this helps.
Sorry, I skipped over a step. There are some ports that customers often want to forward, so the interface provides a drop down menu (upper left) for convenience. This automatically fills in the parameters for that specific use.
Access to a NAS is not on that drop down menu, so it has to be set up as a Custom Service.
Also, access to two different devices requires use of two different external port number.
(digression.....) This is a reason why vendor "Cloud Apps" are more convenient that setting up Port Forwarding.
Imagine that a person has 10 security cameras that all allow web access (http or https). A person could define 10 different Port Forwarding rules, such as
- Port 8081 forwards to port 80 on device 192.168.1.something
- Port 8082 forwards to port 80 on device 192.168.1.something else
- Port 8083 forwards to port 80 on device 192.168.1. and so on .... up to
- Port 8090 forwards to port 80 on the last device 192.168.1.whatever
This means that to access camera 4, one would open a web browser to <my public IP address>:8084
Camera 5 would be <my public IP address>:8085
A lot to keep track of. Much easier to open a smartphone app that displays the 10 cameras and lets the user pick one.
Thanks, I had tried that before but when I clicked custom, nothing seemed to happen. I had not waited long enough as I did it again based on your recommendation and about 15 seconds later it populated (yea). A few follow ups so I don't screw this up.
1. Should I leave it TCP/UDP or just pick TCP for the ports for NASs?
2. I did notice that the NASs do seem to share a few ports and maybe that explains some issues I have with them. I understand now that each port needs to be addressed to a specific NAS. I now see how to do this on the Router and each has assigned internal IP so that part seems a bit time consuming but dooable. Am I correct that this also means I will need to go into each NAS and ensure it knows which ports I'm assigning it on the router as well? The NAS won't automatically detect this will it?
3. On the topic of these ports...it is interesting that in order for my computer to to reach the NAS through their detector APP, I need to turn off my computer based VPN, but I can reach it through IP address without the port designed with the VPN fully functioning. Is this just a function of using the VPN on an internal LAN or is this related to the port "conflicts" I currently have between my NASs?
