What are Ports
When accessing the internet, your computer most likely has a private and public IP address. Your IP address (Internet Protocol) is a unique address assigned to your network which distinguishes you from every other computer/network on the internet.
Loosely speaking, when you request a web page in your browser such as www.townsvillenerds.com, your computer sends a request for text, images and code etc to be sent back to you so you can see it.
The web server hosting the website needs to know where to send it back to, and this is why you need a IP address.
Every application on your computer uses a different port. This is what distinguished between which programs on your computer the web server in this example will send back to.
For websites its usually port 80, so a web server will send the information back to your computer because it knows your IP address, and your web browser will read the information as port 80 is for websites.
What is Port Forwarding
Sometimes the roles are reversed. Rather than you connecting to a server or service, you might someone to connect to you.
In most cases your computer or probably behind a firewall, or router which works as a firewall, protecting your network between your public IP address and your Private.
As a request comes into your network, your router has to decide what to do with it and that it where port forwarding comes into it.
When i was growing up a very popular online multiuser computer game was called Counterstrike. It was very fun and popular and even more fun to host your own games on your own computer, for other from the internet to connect to.
Most Counterstrike server ports used 27015.
The problem was though when people tried to connect to my server (ip address) they would be connecting to my modem/router and not my Countertrike server/computer.
In, there were probably 10 different computers on my network so what I had to do, was tell my router, that any requests asking to connect to my network on port 27015, be automatically forwarded to my computer whioch was hosting the game server. This is why it is called port forwarding.
Other Reasons for Port Forwarding
There are many reasons why people would like to set up Port Forwarding on their routers.
Most of the time it is to connect services together and host your own services on your own network, rather than rent and use other servers.
Below is a list of other popular ports:
Port: 80 – Web Hosting (web Pages)
Port: 443 – SSL
Port: 21 – FTP Server (transferring files)
Port: 3389 – RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)
The list goes on – Popular Game and Application Ports
Security and Port Forwarding
Many would argue that port forwarding is a more secure way to manage incoming connections to your computer and internal communications network, as it only allows traffic on designated specific ports.
I agree with this to that extent. But, you are still opening up a port onto your network for traffic to come in.
And even though it is a minimal risk, and they gate is small, it is still a gate which allows traffic in.
There are millions of ways people gain access to your network. Everyday innovative people think up new ideas and port forwarding is nothing new.
I think accompanied with a firewall on your computer, an antivirus and being critical of what you are hosting on your machine you can definitely minimise the exposure your computer has to the unwanted people and software etc. But you are still putting yourself out there a little.
