Forwarding question

Souness · 30 Oct 2008 at 21:03

OK so I live in a student house with a shared router

I want to play Red Alert 3 online but cannot connect to anyone without forwarding ports

Can I rightly inform my housem8s that nothing bad will come from forwarding a bunch of ports?

I.e. if I need to forward say TCP 80, but they need that to browse websites, will they now be unable to do so?

I don't really understand how it works. Am I preventing them from getting any information that would usually travel via those ports, therefore gimping their internets?

Thx

pjansell · 30 Oct 2008 at 21:27

Well port 80 is generally for web (http) traffic anyway, it's normally open, so i'd find it strange you'd need to forward that port for gaming specifically.

Check on your router which ports are being used by which services (VPN, SSL, FTP etc) and then if you need to forward a bunch of ports (high numbers are generally good) just pick a set that don't clash with them.

You'll typically have settings within your router along the line of this -

Destination IP.....Private Port....Public Port

192.168.30.87....2256.............99
(you machine)

So in the example above, your machine would be listening on port 2256 for data that is coming through the router on port 99. The private port and the public port can be the same, but don't have to be.

tolien · 30 Oct 2008 at 21:42

Forwarding ports means your router won't block incoming traffic with that as the destination port. It won't affect web browsing in the slightest.

Souness · 30 Oct 2008 at 22:23

tolien said:
Forwarding ports means your router won't block incoming traffic with that as the destination port. It won't affect web browsing in the slightest.

Ok thanks. Makes sense!