It tells the NAT to expect outside connections for a specific IP and port combination. īy setting it up on a router, you can enable easy connections to other devices connected to the router. Want to connect to your Internet of Things cooker while away on holiday? Need to access your home computer while at work? Have a baby cam and want to use it while away? All of that is made possible by port forwarding.

This becomes an issue when you want to connect to one of such devices from outside of your home network. Anyone interacting with the router only sees its IP address, while IPs of the devices connected to the router remain invisible. Usually, NAT makes the devices connected to the router invisible from the outside. To deal with the issue of computers and phones having IPs that have duplicates around the world, NAT collects data packages from connected devices, writes down their addresses, slaps its own unique address on top, and forwards it online. There is a scarcity of IP addresses online, so only the router’s IP address is unique. Those port numbers are important because of the existence of the Network Address Translation (NAT) process in your router.

Servetome port forwarding