what is port forwarding and why is it used?
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A connection has many ports, if an IP address is an address for an apartment building. The port is the apartment number for an individual app.
Most apps only respond to certain ports. This allows many apps to use an internet connection.
It’s rare that a working computer is connected directly to the internet.
Usually they’ll be connected to a router, which is connected to the internet.
Now you can setup a computer to do certain things.
Like say send back an webpage or upload a file.
Port Forwarding is telling your router “If someone uses this port, send it to this particular computer on this port”
So that way if someone wants to access your webpage, they put in the webpage port, and your router makes the webpage computer do it.
While if someone wants a file, your router sends it to your file computer, and your file computers does it.
Now another possible usage is just adding a little bit of security. Like a small bit.
Just because your router receives it in one port, doesn’t mean it has to be forwarded to the same port.
So for example, hackers often get lazy, they have their bots try millions of addresses, and they know the most people will use their default ports. So they try doing their hacker tricks on those ports, and if it doesn’t work they move on to another computer.
Now if you set up the port to be different than normal, when they try it, your router will make it fail because you told it to just ignore the port. And if someone who you told tries the right port, it will work.
Now if the hacker tries many different ports, or if they know what port you are using, then they can try it. But trying many different ports is hard and it’s faster to just try someone else.
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