What the heck is port forwarding?

What a great question! Port forwarding is the redirection of computer signals down electronic pathways in your computer.

Why would anyone want to mess with port forwarding?

Your Internet signal enters your computer via the network cable or the wireless adaptor. Within the cable/adaptor are 65,536 pathways to direct the stream of Internet signal or “transfer packets.” Each one of these pathways is a port. To travel through these ports, each transfer packet is required to do three things.

1) It must find an open port.

2) Pass an identification test to gain access to that port.

3) If it fails the id test, it must move on to a new port and try again.

This is like having a 65,536 lane highway and then throwing a tollbooth on each lane. Every “car” has to stop and wait until the tollbooth operator lets it pass. Transfer packets can travel very quickly, some up to several thousand kilometers per second. Sure, that sounds fast, but when you have literally millions of signals pausing to find open ports, the delay adds up fast!

If your Internet signal can find its way to your computer a few milliseconds faster, you could see big gains in downloads and operating speeds. With port forwarding, you can actually rearrange ports and send transfer packets on alternative routes through open ports, without making signals pause, potentially shaving off milliseconds on its delivery time.

This offers the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to bit torrent downloads and streaming media and games. Your games can be less choppy, downloads can be significantly faster, and the overall speed would improve.

Sounds great! How do I get started?

Port forwarding is a manual operation that is not for the faint of heart. It is a fairly technical practice. The web site www.portforward.com has a lengthy list of routers and firewalls and software. You can choose your particular device and then on the next page you can select the specific program you are looking to reroute via port forwarding. The site offers instructions for each program. It is not a complete list, but portforward.com also offers software that will do the port forwarding for you.