Two problems in one:

First, any Port Forwarding or Open Ports I try fails - I have tried both FTP and SMB. With syslogs running I can view the router activating the firewall allow rule to my NAS box, but nothing coming back from the NAS shows up. ftp and SMB to the NAS works fine on the internal LAN, but from not the WAN. I have reported this one to Draytek but no joy so far.

For ftp I had opened ports 20 21 on the firewall and forwarded to the NAS IP, reset the router internal ftp to a different port, and also put the NAS into DMZ at suggestion of email support guys - still no luck though. The call is still open but I'm getting desperate.....

Router firmware is 3.7.8.3, which I believe to be the latest, but the problem was first noticed on 3.7.8, which is what the router arrived with.

As a backup plan, I copied some key data onto a USB drive plugged into the router and set that up for ftp. I disabled Open Ports and set the internal ftp server back to port 21. At first it seemed to be working, but stopped after a few connection attempts. In USB Device status right now I can see three inactive connections, where the maximum is set to 6. I have hit the "drop" buttons for each, but the sessions do not get disconnected, and the buttons remain greyed out. If I attempt to connect to the server with an FTP client (filezilla) it stops at:

>Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
>Error: Connection timed out

The only way I have managed to clear this issue is to reboot the router, but the problem reoccurs after a few connections.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Neil

You are using old firmware the latest is 3.8.1 the bad news your issue doesn't appear in the list of fixes. Doesn't mean the issue hasn't been fixed though. You can download from here ftp://ftp.draytek.com/
Also have you tried disabling the ftp on the router to stop any conflicts??

Are you running passive or active FTP on your NAS? I believe that one works much better when in a NAT style situation (although in the DMZ I would have expected it to work).

I used FTP direct to a my old ReadyNas NV+ in the past with a 2800 and 2820 with no issues (not tried with the 2925)

Thanks for the replies - I'll give 3.8.1 a try anyway.

The NAS box accepts both active & passive ftp connection requests, I have tried both from the client.

I have changed the USB device in the temporary solution - it was running on a Lexar CF card and USB 3 card reader, it seems a lot more stable on a dedicated memory stick, so that's some good news.

Neil