Vista Home Premium/Duo V2 - mapped connection dropping

Since Vista and Win7 are different, I've had to follow your suggestions above as closely as I can. First, Windows does see my network as private, not public--no need for a change there. Second, as far as I can tell, there is no advanced setting--inbound rules for the Vista firewall. There are simply options to enable/disable. I have (and had) printer and file sharing enabled.

I also went to the list of program exceptions to be allowed through firewall. There is a program listed as allowed called Monitor ReadyNAS Device. I tried to add RAIDar as an allowed program, but it said "error, already in the list of exceptions." So I'm thinking Monitor ReadyNAS Device must be RAIDar, one and the same.

The subject of ports is way over my head, but I'm wondering if adding some port the ReadyNAS uses to the exception list could be a fix. Also, there is an option to turn the firewall off for the local area network. I wonder if that would fix it. Googling on this subject, everything says don't do it, it's a security risk. But I don't see how that can be when spouse and I are the only ones using the LAN.