Port Forwarding for video games / applications?

[phantom1421]

Hi there, i have a simple question, is it better to port forward through the router or through the windows firewall? or both. I wasn't really sure, more of the time i do it through my router but i also know that i have windows firewall on. any help in this area would be great.

 

[audie-tron25]

You would need to at least set it in the router settings. Otherwise the router will drop the inbound traffic before Windows receives it. You might need to configure Windows Firewall manually but I'm under the impression that it normally allows most programs through anyway so doesn't need to be touched.

 

[failboat]

port forwarding is for a NAT, which is an edge device service in networking. When you use the internet all your traffic comes from one public ip and uses different ports. It helps reduce the number of public ips required and protects clients behind it's FW. The ISP have to pay money to rent public ips to give you.
When someone wants to connect to a computer behind your NAT they can't send something to 192.168.1.5 if that's your PC's private address.
They send it to 1.1.1.1 (what ever your public is) port 80 and the NAT forwards it to 192.168.1.5 port 80.

Firewalls maintain directional connections for rules to be placed on. Meaning it knows if the first connection was outbound or inbound.
NAT's and firewalls typically block inbound connections so random people can't connect to you.
When you connect to a webpage it's outbound and then the NAT will allow traffic back and forth for that specific connection.

If you want to port forward a service then it must also be passed on any firewall as well. To connect to the service you must know your public ip and make sure the service is running. The ISP can block common destination ports to prevent services from being ran so they can charge you more money to get it unblocked.