Belkin F5D8236-4 Open Port Limit

[Tuecer]

Hello, I'm kinda at my wits end here. I need to open up a large amount of ports in order to play a game with no network hiccups, at least according to the publisher, but near as I can tell, I'm limited to only 20 individual ports being opened on this particular routers web interface.

Is there any work around for this, or am I stuck? If it helps the game is Mass Effect 3

 

[eibgrad]

A single game is requiring 20 port forwards?!

The 20 port forward limit is probably just a limitation of the UI, not the underlying firewall. You might try enabling UPnP (Universal Plug-n-Play) on the router and let the game manage the firewall itself (thus no need to manually configure ports yourself). Or if this is a gaming console, perhaps consider putting the console's IP address in the router's DMZ (in which case, it would be a good idea to assign the console a static IP, so it doesn’t ever change and mess up your DMZ assignment). I would NOT recommend the DMZ for a personal computer, that’s not safe.

P.S. I suppose if the game uses "ranges" of ports (e.g., 8810 thru 8820), you could minimize the number of port forwards required using the range rather than individual port forwards for each. Just depends on whether the Belkin firewall allows this on its UI.

 

[Tuecer]

UPnP has been enabled the whole time, and this has still occurred. The list they gave me is more than 20 ports, but some of them are ranges, like TCP ports 20000-29999. If the ranges are counted as "one" then there are 11 to forward. The only issue is that when I look at the UI for the forwarding it has a column for the ports listed as inbound port as opposed to ports, so while I could put a range in there, I have no idea if it would work or not when actually applied.

Additionally as a test I did try putting my PC in the DMZ to see if that would do anything as that has worked on previous issues but received the same problems relatively quickly and so took it out of there. I also already have a static ip tried from a previous solution.

 

[eibgrad]

Placing the PC in the DMZ doesn't do much good unless the PC's firewall is down. But that's why I didn't like the idea of using the DMZ on the PC. But if you did drop the PC's firewall (if only to test it), and it still didn't work, then something else is wrong. The only other alternative I see is connecting the PC directly to the modem (assuming you have a separate modem and router) and dropping the PC's firewall. If that doesn't work, then it has to be a problem w/ the ISP, perhaps he's blocking ports upstream. But again, I'm always reluctant to expose a PC directly to the internet. But it is an option, if only briefly to see if the router is indeed the problem.