How to port forward in your router

03 May How to port forward in your router

Step 1: Identify your external and internal IP

Every network router has a external IP address and internal IP address. For example your internet router will have an external IP this is public to the world and an internal IP that you use to configure your device. To get your external IP address simply Google “Whats my IP” and you will find your external IP. The external IP is generally assigned by your ISP provider.

Your internal IP is your router IP that you use to access your router settings. You can check your computer’s network settings and search for default gateway IP. This is your internal IP.

Using either your external IP or your internal IP you can get access to your router’s admin page.

Step 2: Find out if you have a dynamic or static external IP

Most ISP will not give you a static external IP. What this means is that your router IP is going to change every time your router is restarted. There is no guarantee that your IP will remain the same if your ISP is going to provide a dynamic IP. So any settings or configuration that you carry out is going to fail at sometime or the other once the IP changes.  You can find out if you have a static or dynamic IP by simply speaking with your ISP. Chance are that your ISP may charge you more for a static IP. Fortunately there is an easy way to fix this.

Step 3: DDNS Setup

Dynamic IP has existed since ages and most routers support DDNS or Dynamic DNS update. Depending on your router make and model, it may support dyndns.com, noip.com dynamic IP update services. Your router will automatically update its external IP against a predefined domain at regular intervals of time. Weather you have a static IP or dynamic IP its always a good idea to pair it with a domain using a DDNS service so that you can easily remember your external IP with a domain.

Step 4:Set a static IP for your device or server

You must always give a static IP to your device that you want to connect. If not your router will keep changing the IP assigned to your device based on your DHCP rules.

Step 5: Setup forwarding in your router

Different routers call forwarding with different names and can be placed in different sections. Some of the common names are

• Virtual Servers
• Port Forwarding
• Forwarding
• NAT

Depending on the make and model of your router this may vary.

To add a new port forward rule

1. Select a name for your rule
2. Set the port that you want to forward from your external IP
3. Set the internal port
4. Set the IP where the the traffic needs to be sent to.

Some Examples for port forward

Suppose I have a web server running in my house on port 80. The server is connected to my router with an internal IP of 192.168.1.1 and the server has a static IP of 192.168.1.10. Then my port forward rules would be

1. Name: Web Server
2. From Port: 80
3. To Port: 80
4. IP: 192.168.1.10

With these rules I can access my web server with http://<my IP/domain>

Suppose I have a DVR running in my office on port 8999. The DVR is connected to my router with an internal IP of 192.168.3.1 and the server has a static IP of 192.168.3.100. Then my port forward rules would be

1. Name: Home DVR
2. From Port: 7000
3. To Port: 8999
4. IP: 192.168.3.100

With these rules I can access my DVR with http://<my IP/domain>:7000

Screenshots for port forward