Port Forwarding. What exactly happens when using port forwarding for gaming?
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Somebody outside your house trying to connect in only sees one IP address, which is your router. Your router generally does not allow *incoming* connections without one of your computers requesting it first, and even if it did allow random people to send traffic into your network, there are usually multiple computers in your house and an incoming connection to your router’s publicly-visible IP address would not connect to any single one of your computers in particular. So if anybody wants to connect into your house from outside to reach your (for example) Minecraft server, there are 2 barriers – a security lockout and also, the traffic needs to somehow get routed to your *gaming computer specifically*, not your cell phone or smart lightbulb or whatever other devices are on your network.
Ports are basically traffic that is tagged for use by a specific program or service. When you forward a port you are telling your router 2 things:
1. This specific type of incoming traffic is allowed
2. When you allow this type of traffic, I want it to go to my gaming computer (not my cell phone, etc)
This is a potential security risk because now anybody on the internet can talk to your gaming computer while it would normally be shut off to outside connections. Any Minecraft-related traffic sent to your house will be routed to your gaming computer. Now, because that port is specific to Minecraft (or whatever game) the only program on your computer that will actually accept and interact with that incoming traffic is the game. So random people from outside “shouldn’t” be able to do anything harmful like see all your files or install unwanted software just because you opened a Minecraft-specific port. However, you need to be very sure your game is kept updated and is from a trusted company in the first place. If there is some security vulnerability that would allow somebody to interact with your game and by doing so, get access to the rest of your computer, that would be a risk.
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