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Your router does a lot more than just give you access to the internet.

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It blocks strangers who are trying to get into your home network for seedy purposes.

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But sometimes it accidentally blocks legitimate traffic.

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And you have to poke a couple holes in your router's solid firewall

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so your gadgets will work correctly. Doing this involves a process called port forwarding,

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a term you might have seen in your router settings menu. But is that some complicated inside baseball for network engineers?

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Or is it something you can actually use at home? It turns out port forwarding can be important to the average Joe or Jane,

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especially if you play games online, use smart home devices or run any kind of server.

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You see a port in this case isn't an Ethernet or USB port in the back of your computer.

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This kind of port exists in software and it's basically just a channel devices used to talk

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to each other like those cups and with the strings attached as they go.

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Which port is being used depends on the application.

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For example, secure web browsing often uses port 443,

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the network time protocol that keeps your PCs time up to date uses port 123,

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and if you're playing Minecraft, you're using port 25565, the classic.

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And there are thousands of ports available, with many of them being unassigned,

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so programs can use them as needed. So what exactly is port forwarding then?

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Well, whenever a server or another device on the internet wants to talk to a gadget on your

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home network, most routers by default block that request for security.

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It'll only let outside traffic in if you initiated the connection.

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Web browsing is a great example of this because when you type in a web address,

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you're the one starting the connection with whatever server is hosting that web page.

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Port forwarding overcomes this limitation and allows something from the outside

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to start a connection with the device on your network. So if something like an online game or your video doorbell just isn't working,

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port forwarding may just be the trick. So here's how to set up port forwarding.

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First, you need to know what port is used by the program you want to allow through.

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You can typically find that information with a quick Google search. But some programs can use any open port that you specify,

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so if that's the case, pick a port that is typically not used by anything else.

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If you're not sure whether a port is usually free, we'll have a list in the description.

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Next, you'll need to go into your router settings and assign a static IP address

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to the device you're trying to set up with port forwarding. A typical router will change the local address of devices on your network regularly,

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so you'll need to have one local IP address for the gadget in question.

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Make sure to assign it something in your local IP range, which typically starts with the numbers 192.168.

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The final step is to set up a port forwarding rule, also in your router settings.

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It's just a matter of specifying the port you're using or a range of ports,

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then punching in which internal IP address the traffic should go to.

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This way, when an outside program tries to connect to your router via its public or external IP

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address on that port, your router knows to allow the connection and forward the traffic

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to the device you want. You see that why it's called that?

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After doing this, you should be good to go. You can even use an online port checker to quickly check that the port you want is open

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and that your settings are correct. Do keep in mind that because you're allowing an outside connection to your internal network,

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port forwarding can open you up to some security risks,

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especially if you're forwarding to a PC or a server rather than a game console.

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So make sure you're not opening up more ports than you need.

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Don't get greedy for ports, they aren't unlimited Olive Garden breadsticks.

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The good news is that modern operating systems like Windows,

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as well as many popular applications that use port forwarding like Plex and TeamSpeak,

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are pretty good about not giving excessive control to someone connecting from the outside.

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But make sure your software is up to date. You don't want a missed security patch to allow some rando to start peeking through

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your cameras to see you doing something embarrassing with your 14 cats.

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That's between you and your cats. That's it for this video guys, thanks for watching.

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Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, check out our other videos and comment below with video suggestions.

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And most important of all, you know what I'm gonna say.

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