just a basic explanation of port forwarding:
the outside world sees your network as a single ip address, the address of the router.
on the other side of the router is your network where your computers can see each other and directly address/connect to each other to any port they wish.
when an outside comp needs to connect to a specific computer in your network and to a specific port, that's when you need to configure port forwarding.
say the routers external IP is 111.111.111.111 and your target comps network ip is 192.168.1.10. if an outside computer wants to telnet to your traget comp (and telnet default port is 23) then in your routers port forwarding you can set up:
port:23
forwarding address:192.168.1.10
target port:23
you can just as well do
port:any number (e.g. 777)
forwarding address:192.168.1.10
target port:23
in which case the outside world would have to telnet to your target comp by explicitly naming the "777" port, eg "c:>\telnet 111.111.111.111 777"
hope this helps |