Been trying to figure out this port forwarding thing much like a bunch of other people. I used portforward.com to forward my ports. Disabled XP SP2 firewall and removed Comodo to get this figured out. Still no go. Utorrent complained it wasn’t happy. Someone suggested going into my modem as that should be the only thing holding me back. I then enabled static nat for the base computer (the one that is actually connected to the wall 24/7. This turned utorrents light green and now the port is forwarded. I’ve been reading up on nat and I know what a static IP is but it confuses the heck out of me. So, what exactly did I do in there. How did setting a static nat for the main desktop enable port forwarding.
Also, did I create any security holes? Besides the obvious no comodo installed one.
Tomorrow I’ll try and get Comodo functioning right.
It all depends on what option(s) you used to configure the NAT ?
There are several possibilities to allow incoming traffic (That’s what uTorrent want’s).
You can drill a very small hole in your firewall and allow only that specific portnumber to your internal pc.
Or you allow “all” traffic to arrive on your internal pc (router config calls these virtual host/ dmz host or other names).
This will make you at high risk if you don’t have a Firewall on your pc, because of all ports being forwarded to your pc, not only the uTorrent requests.
I prefer to configure 1 specific port for incoming traffic and let de router be the first firewall on my connection.
So can you tell us, or show us (screengrab) a little more about what you configured in your router ?
I forwarded just the utorrent port with my router but that didn’t work. I had to allow a static nat on my modem. But I don’t have an idea what that is or what it does. In English that is. I don’t speak geek well just yet.
What is an nat and how/why did it not let my port to forward until I allowed it. I’m afraid to install Comodo right now for fear I might disrupt that delicate balance.
Your modem’s Static NAT (Network Address Translation) is the same as DMZ Host or Virtual Server.
As the italic text in your screenshot show’s it will pass all traffic from your external ip address to your internal pc.
NAT is just a translation from your external ip address (on the internet, let’s say 18.19.20.21) to your internal pc 192.168.2.100 or so. So if some host on the internet want’s to make a connection with you on your uTorrent port (let’s say 49000) it connects to host 18.19.20.21 port 49000, normally that would be your router.
But in this case you configured your router to pass all traffic for 18.19.20.21 to 192.168.2.100 and so it will.
Once the packet arrives in your router it will take it apart, replace the 18.19.20.21 destination address with 192.168.2.100 and forwards the packet out to your internal network.
PAT is only Port Address Translations which does basically the same but only for traffic specific for that configured port, not for ALL traffic to the external ip.
Based on the second screenshot, you should be able to receive the 49000 - 49000 port traffic on you internal 192.168.2.xxx wiped out ip address (make sure your pc has that address). Did you configure uTorrent to only use that port ?
Thanks so much for the explanation. Utorrent is on a pc that has been configured with the static ip. The one that I wiped out. And yes, in router port forwarding menu the entire IP is in there. So the static NAT is just passing all the information straight to the router where the stuff destined for 192.168.2. gets passed straight to me on my port 49000? Basically, I don’t want information to pass through “Dave_XP” That’s not my computer (belongs to my father, and its where the router and the modem are at, the “base” if you will) and I’d prefer to leave it out of the equation. I’d want everything to go from the internet, to the modem, to the router, to me, which is what it should have been doing in the first place without me having to ok a static nat.
So did I get this right? The static nat passes it all to the router like it should have been doing in the first place? Where I get confused is that the modems firewall is off so it shouldn’t have caught anything to start with.
All traffic from the internet to you external ip is send to Dave_XP as seen in screenshot 1.
All traffic from the internet to you on port 49000 is send to 192.168.2.wipedout ip as seen in screenshot 2.
I don’t get that though. All traffic is actually coming to me in my room through the router. as evidenced by the fact that the port is now forwarded. Turn off static nat and the port isn’t forwarded anymore. Dave_Xp is the base computer where the modem, etc, is all plugged up into. Everything is coming into 192.168.2.136 or something like that in my room, set with the static ip. Isn’t that what the port forward was for in the router? I’m still at a loss to what/or how nat is helping this process.
First, thanks a lot for trying to explain this in dumbed down english. I can surf the internet while the desktop (PC1) is shut down. I’m doing it now.
My connection is setup like this:
Phone line goes to the modem. Blue cable to router. Yellow cable from router to main computer (thats how main computer gets internet access). Another green cable is attached from router to a wall jack. That last one gives me ethernet in my room should I need to use it.
In this setup it doesn’t make sense that if you disable the Static NAT to pc1 you no longer can connect with uTorrent. Can you try to test the port with static NAT disabled using Shields UP.