Question Port forwarding not working unless firewall is disabled ?

[Macovitch]

Port forward works fine when firewall is disabled. I have attempted to add rules to inbound AND outbound for the ports I want to open in windows firewall. I'm unsure what I am doing wrong with windows firewall and friends.

If it is in question, I do have my own static public IP, router settings are fine, when the firewall is disabled I can see the ports open and I can see the game server on the server list. Anything would be greatly appreciated I will attempt to answer anything I can.

 

[bill001g]

That is the purpose of the firewall. It should be possible to open just certain ports, can be confusing sometimes.

What do you feel is the risk to disable the firewall. Generally the firewall in windows is mostly disabled for most people. The problem comes is sometimes microsoft is stupid and thinks you network is a public network and puts in much more restrictive rules. You want to be sure your network is set to private. When it is set to public pretty much only web surfing works.

In general it should not hurt to disable the firewall. As you can tell nothing gets into your network in the first place unless you set port forwarding rules. This alone does most of what a firewall does, nobody from the internet can attack your machine because they can't see it. Only other machines on your lan could see you. I am not sure what if anything the firewall does to prevent you from loading bad software that is more of a virus/malware function.