NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Help with RAX20 and port forwarding FTP
I just got this router today and have it setup through a Xfinity Gateway in bridged mode. Previous to this on the Gateway, I was able to port forward my Raspberry PI FTP server (port 21) and access i...
There is only one port 21/TCP ... if the router is configured on ReadyShare to FTP, port 21/TCP is obviously already occupied. Disable the FTP service on the advanced ReadyShare settings.
I would expect that this does free up port 21/TCP on the WAN interface to become available for the port forwarding. Netgear has an old flaw on port 443 (the default https one) - even with the https remote access service and https ReadyShare disabled or relocated to an alternate port, the port 443/TCP isn't becoming available for port forwarding.
Something general ref. ftp: These routers (including your previous one) have an application layer gateway (ALG) listening on the standard ports, e.g. 21/TCP for FTP on the handshake communication for the passive connection, dynamically adding a port forward to that port. If using FTPS (encryption) the ALG can't work so you need to configure the passive port range configured on the ftp server in a port forward range.
Yes, I did have to go in the Router settings / Advanced / Ready Share Storage, to disable the ‘FTP’ & ‘FTP (via internet) In order for it to work. I am still unsure of how to connect to port 21/FTP but that is fine as long as it just works with how it's setup now. I will have to read up on how to setup 443/TCP as I don't think I have ever used that before currently with my Raspberry PI. Once I get that figured out, I'll let you know If I'm able to get that working. I do appreciate the help though. It will be nice to know if I ever run into this again. Thanks
Only 21/TCP is required for the FTP control stream - 22/TCP can't be used over NAT for the FTP data stream because we have to use passive FTP. The FTP client is getting a so called passive data port assigned, the FTP ALG does take care of the port forwarding. This is absolutely normal on any NAT router.
Next, don't be confused:
- FTP is FTP, it's secured variant is FTPES (where the FTP client can request the FTP server to use TLS).
- SFTP is a complete different thing, this is a SSH File Transfer Protocol - handled ove the SSH port 22/TCP.