# Port forwarding - can it be dangerous ?



## M. Malone (Oct 20, 2007)

Greetings,

some multiplayer games require me to open ports to host games and play with my friends. Also, I have read that port forwarding can greatly increase one's download/upload speed with torrents. 

However, I have read that this may cause a threat to my system (and network as a whole). I'm not too sure how it functions. Say I open port 6100 to host a game. Can a malicious person access my computer through this port ? I know it sounds stupid, but I don't know very much about all this :4-dontkno. I have an anti-virus and a firewall, and my router is a Linksys, but I don't think this info is relevant.

I'd be grateful if someone could give me the rundown on port forwarding: how exactly does it work, what are the dangers and what safety measures can I take ? :4-dontkno

Thanks a lot.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2007)

Really opening any port on your computer is a gigantic hole for hackers to get through. All they would have to do is telnet it and bam you are hacked. I would really recommend not doing it but it is your choice so I can say nothing in the matter. Port forwarding (I am not sure as I forgot a lot of my training :laugh I believe is when an IP Address contacts a certain port where you will tell that port to forward to another one. Such as someone pings port 25 on IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx it would forward to the port 26. I am not exactly sure as networking was never really my forte.


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## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

Well, let's not get carried away. :smile: Many applications require open ports to function, and it's not quite that easy to hack you. Remember, there has to be a possible exploit that can be utilized through that open port for a hacker to be successful.

If it were really that easy to gain access to any network with open ports, there wouldn't be an Internet. Every web server has a very common port open, port 80. :wink:


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