To open arbitrary ports on a NetGear Stora (if you don't like UPnP), edit /etc/init.d/iptables and add a variable near the top of the file called TCP_OPEN_PORTS_EXT.

export TCP_OPEN_PORTS_EXT=29101

Then issue a restart via “/etc/init.d/iptables restart”.

This is necessary if you want to setup an arbitrary daemon on the system, like transmission, maybe.

This works because the iptables script includes a section that uses the variable:

# Accept the 3rd party ports that are set to be opened:
    if [ ! -z "${TCP_OPEN_PORTS_EXT}" ]; then
        for port in $TCP_OPEN_PORTS_EXT; do
                iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $port -j ACCEPT || die
        done
    fi

This can also be accomplished by editing /etc/iptables/config… doh.

Apparently Drobo has the same armv5tejl architecture, so many pre-compiled binaries (like netcat) are available for the Stora here.