Danger of port forwarding?

DEL 707 · 2 Mar 2012 at 19:45

Bit of a stupid question, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

I did a format and fresh install of windows today, everything went fine and I'm now reinstalling program and games. My big problem so far is World of Warcraft.
Whenever I try to patch the game, my connection goes slow then finally stops, I'm not sure if it's killing the router but I lose connection to it for a few seconds then it can take a minute or so before I have access to the internet.

Looking for a solution I was pointed to this http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/configuring-your-router-for-use-with-the-blizzard-downloader

Short version

If you are using a router and have exhausted all other possible reasons for the Downloader failing to download data, we recommend that you forward TCP Port 3724 on your router. The Downloader will also benefit from forwarding TCP Ports 1119, 4000, 6112, 6113, 6114 and 6881-6999.

I'm on VM using a super hub, not exactually confident in what I did, but I went to portforwarding and added those ports listed. For the most part it seems to have worked, I havn't lost connection in over 30 minutes, though my download speed is only 100-500kb/s, on steam i get between 2-3mb/s.

Since I know NOTHING about port forwarding, is it dangerous at all? Have i left my netword open or vunerable.
Also why the hell wasn't this an issue before?

KIA · 2 Mar 2012 at 21:51

You have nothing to worry about if you're just forwarding ports for the WoW P2P client.

DEL 707 · 2 Mar 2012 at 22:13

Well a little update, got a hint that NOD32 could be a problem, since it's a newer version then what I was using before.

I removed all the port forwarding from my router, uninstalled NOD32 and put on Avast free, so far no problems, only 700k/s but better then nothing.
Not sure if I should just stick with Avast or head over to the ESET forums to see if I can get a solution.

KIA · 3 Mar 2012 at 11:22

MSSE.

ChrisD. · 3 Mar 2012 at 13:51

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/products/security-essentials

Liquidfox · 4 Mar 2012 at 16:23

Don't VM limit p2p traffic during the day? If so, that's your issue. Steam uses a direct connection to Steams servers while Wow uses p2p if i remember rightly.

GaryH-21 · 4 Mar 2012 at 21:57

Also, on the superhub, go to "services" and turn off Port Scan Detection and IP Flood Detection - they were giving me bother when sending large amounts of data, blocking me from the superhub for a short period of time!

Dist · 5 Mar 2012 at 00:40

I think by default the superhub has UPnP enabled, which lets applications open ports as needed so port forwarding shouldn't be an issue with the blizzard downloader. The problem with P2P downloaders is that if you max your upload speed that can cause any downloading (which means anything, even web browsing) to possibly slow to a crawl/time out. Most downloaders that do use P2P usually have an option to disable P2P stuff, personally I would always disable it if possible.