Is Port Forwarding still a Thing?

[Daffy D]

 

Was a time when there were lots of requests for setting up Port Forwarding, don't see these anymore.

 

Still get requests of how to connect modem and routers so obviously people have new or upgrade but nobody seems to worry about Port Forwarding.

 

I realize Port Forwarding is only necessary with Torrenting, so is it that more people are Streaming and not so many downloading these days, or are modern Routers set up automatically for Port Forwarding?

 

For those not familiar with Port Forwarding it's a setting on your Router that allows your client (uTorrent or whatever you use) to be seen by others downloading the same file to share and make all downloads quicker. (And necessary for sites that require a good Ratio) 

 

You are still able to download files without Port Forwarding but that's "not cricket" because you're not sharing your download and then you get guys with "no seeds and very slow" complaints on here. 

 

Anyways is Port Forwarding still alive and well or am I the only one still using it?

 

 

[robblok]

To be honest I havent had to forward ports anymore for games and torrents for a long time. Maybe software on routers and programs has become better as its more normal now to have multiple computers and a router. 

 

Just a guess.

[2 is 1]

Havent download torrent's in long time, all can get easily free and "legally" streaming movie/series and use Spotify, youtube etc. to music.

[wprime]

Consumer ISPs are more and more commonly using CGNAT so you no longer have a public IP making port forwarding pointless.

[JetsetBkk]

2 minutes ago, wprime said:

Consumer ISPs are more and more commonly using CGNAT so you no longer have a public IP making port forwarding pointless.

When my ISP changed from ADSL to Fibre, I don't think the router had a NAT setting like the old one. Still the torrents came down, but the client ("Vuze" or "Azureus") always reported a NAT Error and I don't think the router had the "NAT Table" to set up the Port Forwarding. This was several years ago so I might not be remembering it clearly.

[recom273]

Yeah .. I have a couple of ports open for torrent clients - it enables me to connect to others in the trackers I use.

I also need to forward ports for a reverse proxy to access my media library remotely or share my ebook library

with my folks.

 

I don’t see it as a thing of the past, perhaps people are a bit too confident in UPnP. 

[sammieuk1]

Early IP cams used port forwarding and were a pain to set up now its all scan QR code and away you go ???? 

[Daffy D]

3 hours ago, 2 is 1 said:

Havent download torrent's in long time, all can get easily free and "legally" streaming movie/series and use Spotify, youtube etc. to music.

Nothing illegal with downloading Torrents.

 

Please check your facts before spouting off.

 

   

[Daffy D]

As I said in my original post, you don't need to Port Forward to download and you can also upload, but the point of having a dedicated port is that your Torrent uploads are better.

 

I use uTorrent which has a little icon in the bottom right corner which when green shows my port is open.

 

Any other color yellow or red will indicate that that I'm not getting the full speed on my uploads.  

 

[Daffy D]

40 minutes ago, sammieuk1 said:

Early IP cams used port forwarding and were a pain to set up now its all scan QR code and away you go ???? 

I didn't know that  

 

Technology passing me by 

3 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

When my ISP changed from ADSL to Fibre, I don't think the router had a NAT setting like the old one. Still the torrents came down, but the client ("Vuze" or "Azureus") always reported a NAT Error and I don't think the router had the "NAT Table" to set up the Port Forwarding. This was several years ago so I might not be remembering it clearly.

I am on Fibre with ZTE router and that has Port Forward capability.

 

Perhaps your "Errors" were by not having a Port Forward for your client.

 

 

[JetsetBkk]

1 hour ago, Daffy D said:

I didn't know that  

 

Technology passing me by 

I am on Fibre with ZTE router and that has Port Forward capability.

 

Perhaps your "Errors" were by not having a Port Forward for your client.

 

 

I used Vuze (Azureus) for years on ADSL and set up the Port Forwarding without problems (after a learning curve, of course). The Vuze program has/had a NAT Test function and it always passed. The port that Vuze used was entered in the NAT/PortForwarding table and the Vuze executable was set as the receiver of all the packets from that port (I think that's how it worked). 

 

I had massive ratios on sites like "The Box", "The Empire" and "The Geeks" (all now gone) because I wrote a program that examined the front page of the site every minute or so, downloaded it, searched for any "Free" torrents and immediately downloaded them. So I was always one of the first to get the "Free" torrents and many people used to upload from me. I had hundreds of Gigabytes spare download capacity because I was uploading constantly. I didn't even watch these "Free" torrents - EastEnders, Neighbours, Home and Away, etc. - they were just downloaded so I could build up a good ratio. 

 

Those days are gone now. Too easy to get stuff streamed.

[2 is 1]

2 hours ago, Daffy D said:

Nothing illegal with downloading Torrents.

 

Please check your facts before spouting off.

 

   

So tell me why they shut down Pirate Bay and guys behind at the time get fines!? Coz they share legal stuff! Are you serius!

 

The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software.[1]Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet linksand torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws as well as a central figure in an anti-copyrightmovement.[2] The website faced several shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.[3]

In April 2009, the website's founders (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm) were found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement and were sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine.[4] In some countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxy websites have been providing access to it.[5][6][7][8][9] Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released by 2015 after having served shortened sentences.[3]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

[robblok]

12 hours ago, recom273 said:

Yeah .. I have a couple of ports open for torrent clients - it enables me to connect to others in the trackers I use.

I also need to forward ports for a reverse proxy to access my media library remotely or share my ebook library

with my folks.

 

I don’t see it as a thing of the past, perhaps people are a bit too confident in UPnP. 

Might depend on your router too, high grade expensive routers might be better. I used to be like you have no need for it anymore since i had a good router. I also think technology changes. 

[Daffy D]

10 hours ago, 2 is 1 said:

So tell me why they shut down Pirate Bay and guys behind at the time get fines!? Coz they share legal stuff! Are you serius!

 

The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software.[1]Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet linksand torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws as well as a central figure in an anti-copyrightmovement.[2] The website faced several shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.[3]

In April 2009, the website's founders (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm) were found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement and were sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine.[4] In some countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxy websites have been providing access to it.[5][6][7][8][9] Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released by 2015 after having served shortened sentences.[3]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

Because they were offering "Copyright" stuff.

 

Nothing wrong with Torrents themselves it's the illegal content of some that's the problem.

 

 

  

[Daffy D]

10 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

I used Vuze (Azureus) for years on ADSL and set up the Port Forwarding without problems (after a learning curve, of course). The Vuze program has/had a NAT Test function and it always passed. The port that Vuze used was entered in the NAT/PortForwarding table and the Vuze executable was set as the receiver of all the packets from that port (I think that's how it worked). 

 

I had massive ratios on sites like "The Box", "The Empire" and "The Geeks" (all now gone) because I wrote a program that examined the front page of the site every minute or so, downloaded it, searched for any "Free" torrents and immediately downloaded them. So I was always one of the first to get the "Free" torrents and many people used to upload from me. I had hundreds of Gigabytes spare download capacity because I was uploading constantly. I didn't even watch these "Free" torrents - EastEnders, Neighbours, Home and Away, etc. - they were just downloaded so I could build up a good ratio. 

 

Those days are gone now. Too easy to get stuff streamed.

"The Box" is still going, just renamed TVChaos.

 

[recom273]

1 hour ago, robblok said:

Might depend on your router too, high grade expensive routers might be better. I used to be like you have no need for it anymore since i had a good router. I also think technology changes. 

I totally respect your theories Rob, but IMHO its not that complicated - maybe UPnP has changed, generally speaking its considered a serious venerability. If you forward a port through the firewall, then a specific port is open to the web, you use UPnP then you are unleashing a whole can of worms. If you don't need to forward ports then that's great, but I don't think its due to advances in tech.

 

I forward torrent ports for one reason only, that's to make myself connectable to other users on private trackers, one reason to generate upload credit to the maximum number of leechers and another is that I host a few hundred small files on a cult movie site, I'm usually the sole seeder - if I'm not connectable, then the leecher can't connect to me and the whole exercise is a waste of time. So there is my "need" to forward ports.

 

I use unifi products, (router / Switches / Wifi AP) they are considered "pro-sumer" if you want to buy into that terminology.

 

[recom273]

6 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

"The Box" is still going, just renamed TVChaos.

 

Ouch! Don't say that too loudly - TVC admin will tie you to a post and beaten you with a stout stick. I don't think they like to be called a renamed box - also a lot of the uploaders that made the box so awesome, have strong options about TVC.

[Daffy D]

17 minutes ago, recom273 said:

Ouch! Don't say that too loudly - TVC admin will tie you to a post and beaten you with a stout stick. I don't think they like to be called a renamed box - also a lot of the uploaders that made the box so awesome, have strong options about TVC.

Opps!  Solly, change not always for the better 

 

Maybe the powers that be this site could take note of that 

[johng]

14 hours ago, sammieuk1 said:

Early IP cams used port forwarding and were a pain to set up now its all scan QR code and away you go ???? 

I have totally the opposite view of those scan the QR code and away you go IPcams   not only do they force you connect your cam to an unknown server.. ( security) you can't even set them up without connecting and without installing their phone app  making an account with them  and the QR code malarkey !

The last 2 cams I tried where  not a pleasant experience to set up with the QR code  one of which I  could not connect to their server at all and had to install  hacked firmware to at least get a usable camera on my home LAN it is not exposed to the internet.

https://github.com/edsub/Goke_GK7102

 

 

[robblok]

1 hour ago, recom273 said:

I totally respect your theories Rob, but IMHO its not that complicated - maybe UPnP has changed, generally speaking its considered a serious venerability. If you forward a port through the firewall, then a specific port is open to the web, you use UPnP then you are unleashing a whole can of worms. If you don't need to forward ports then that's great, but I don't think its due to advances in tech.

 

I forward torrent ports for one reason only, that's to make myself connectable to other users on private trackers, one reason to generate upload credit to the maximum number of leechers and another is that I host a few hundred small files on a cult movie site, I'm usually the sole seeder - if I'm not connectable, then the leecher can't connect to me and the whole exercise is a waste of time. So there is my "need" to forward ports.

 

I use unifi products, (router / Switches / Wifi AP) they are considered "pro-sumer" if you want to buy into that terminology.

 

I used to do the same as you needed port forwarding but at some point it was no longer needed. My NAS who is behind the router has no problem with torrents and other users downloading from me without any port forwarding. 

 

Like i said there was a time that it was needed, its no longer so in most of the cases. So something changed. I think software maybe hardware.

 

And its just that a theory, because i can't be sure I do remember having to set stuff up like that in the past but not anymore. 

[recom273]

1 hour ago, robblok said:

I used to do the same as you needed port forwarding but at some point it was no longer needed. My NAS who is behind the router has no problem with torrents and other users downloading from me without any port forwarding. 

 

Like i said there was a time that it was needed, its no longer so in most of the cases. So something changed. I think software maybe hardware.

 

And its just that a theory, because i can't be sure I do remember having to set stuff up like that in the past but not anymore. 

Bittorrrent protocol doesn’t require you to forward your ports, this is nothing new and it’s not related to new tech.

 

If you don’t forward your ports then it just takes a little longer to connect to active seeders.

If you have your forwarded your ports correctly, then you are what’s known as connectable. You cannot be connectable without forwarding your ports or relying upon UPnP to do it for you, however if you rely upon UPnP then do your homework and decide if it’s a safe protocol to use.

 

If you are using a public tracker and downloading well seeded torrents and everything is cool, you are downloading whatever and fast enough, then no need to worry about forwarding ports.

 

if you are in a private tracker, then your upload ratio maybe important to you, you want leechers to connect straight away and download from you, not others then it’s important to be connectable. If you are trying to seed or connect to torrents with one or two seeders then it’s advisable to be connectable.

 

Im not trying to dispel your post, more just explain why I bother.

 

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118918/is-upnp-still-insecure

 

https://superuser.com/questions/1053414/how-does-port-forwarding-help-in-torrents

[robblok]

3 minutes ago, recom273 said:

Bittorrrent protocol doesn’t require you to forward your ports, this is nothing new and it’s not related to new tech.

 

If you don’t forward your ports then it just takes a little longer to connect to active seeders.

If you have your forwarded your ports correctly, then you are what’s known as connectable. You cannot be connectable without forwarding your ports or relying upon UPnP to do it for you, however if you rely upon UPnP then do your homework and decide if it’s a safe protocol to use.

 

If you are using a public tracker and downloading well seeded torrents and everything is cool, you are downloading whatever and fast enough, then no need to worry about forwarding ports.

 

if you are in a private tracker, then your upload ratio maybe important to you, you want leechers to connect straight away and download from you, not others then it’s important to be connectable. If you are trying to seed or connect to torrents with one or two seeders then it’s advisable to be connectable.

 

Im not trying to dispel your post, more just explain why I bother.

 

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118918/is-upnp-still-insecure

 

https://superuser.com/questions/1053414/how-does-port-forwarding-help-in-torrents

No i like your replies as I am not set in my ways. I only remarked that I used to have to setup port forwarding for all kind of software but not anymore. I been reading a bit more on the topic but it did not anwser why this is now less important then before.

 

I certainly can always learn more about IT. So don't worry about replying. I usually use public trackers no invites for private. I use my NAS to do bittorent as i find it safer. (linux). It also has its own search and prevents all kinds of bad things. I use newsgroups more than torrents. Only use torrents when i cant find it in newsgroups. I got an automated download service (sickbeard / sickgear) on the NAS.

 

In the past i really used port forwarding a lot even for games but not anymore. So something has changed but not sure what. 

 

[recom273]

18 minutes ago, robblok said:

No i like your replies as I am not set in my ways. I only remarked that I used to have to setup port forwarding for all kind of software but not anymore. I been reading a bit more on the topic but it did not anwser why this is now less important then before.

 

I certainly can always learn more about IT. So don't worry about replying. I usually use public trackers no invites for private. I use my NAS to do bittorent as i find it safer. (linux). It also has its own search and prevents all kinds of bad things. I use newsgroups more than torrents. Only use torrents when i cant find it in newsgroups. I got an automated download service (sickbeard / sickgear) on the NAS.

 

In the past i really used port forwarding a lot even for games but not anymore. So something has changed but not sure what. 

 

Yup - I know you are a usenet / sickbeard user, something I have less than zero knowledge of (but I use radarr / sonarr ) and I'm with you, a linux box is waaaay safer - I am in some really well organized private torrent trackers that are comparable to usenet for recent releases, but going off topic, I still need to be in a usenet indexer like a site? its not just a matter of paying the subscription is it? I asked someone for an invite to drunkenslug but never got anywhere.

 

But coming back, what happened to forwarding ports for games? I'm not a gamer so have no idea, but I gather it was quite important back in the day.

[robblok]

18 hours ago, recom273 said:

Yup - I know you are a usenet / sickbeard user, something I have less than zero knowledge of (but I use radarr / sonarr ) and I'm with you, a linux box is waaaay safer - I am in some really well organized private torrent trackers that are comparable to usenet for recent releases, but going off topic, I still need to be in a usenet indexer like a site? its not just a matter of paying the subscription is it? I asked someone for an invite to drunkenslug but never got anywhere.

 

But coming back, what happened to forwarding ports for games? I'm not a gamer so have no idea, but I gather it was quite important back in the day.

Its not anymore.. i used to have to set port forwarding but its no longer needed. So like i said something changed, maybe router or game software. I used to even have to set up a DMZ (removing firewall for certain games so starting DMZ for a computer). Now these things are no longer needed and i have multiple computers that i can game on without having to change anything.

That is why i thought some things changed. I used to have to play around with port forwarding a lot more.

[bradiston]

On 8/13/2021 at 10:15 PM, sammieuk1 said:

Early IP cams used port forwarding and were a pain to set up now its all scan QR code and away you go ???? 

I used to use port forwarding for my CCTV cams. I could then log into them from anywhere in the world and edit their settings or just view live CCTV (paint drying comes to mind except if you knew of something happening back home). But as their shelf lives expired I had to replace with, you guessed it, Hikvision. A Chinese company currently under investigation (what Chinese company isn't?) for supplying all the Uyghur surveillance systems in Xinjiang. I also have a left over ZTE router from an old tot fibre installation. Guess I just need a Huawei phone to complete the home surveillance network.

Never managed to set the Hikvisions up for remote viewing, and I only have an AIS router so I'm content with motion detect JPGs being emailed to me.

[DefaultName]

I think it's still needed, but my torrent client seems to do it all by itself.

[Freddy42OZ]

On 8/13/2021 at 7:29 PM, 2 is 1 said:

Havent download torrent's in long time, all can get easily free and "legally" streaming movie/series and use Spotify, youtube etc. to music.

Have Netflix updated their stupid interface so you can make shows you've watched without having to watch them on their platform?

I pay for Netflix but prefer to torrent the shows because I hate their stupid interface.  

 

[recom273]

57 minutes ago, Freddy42OZ said:

Have Netflix updated their stupid interface so you can make shows you've watched without having to watch them on their platform?

I pay for Netflix but prefer to torrent the shows because I hate their stupid interface.  

 

No, but you can do that with a website called Trakt, if you use Jellyfin or Plex media players (which has nothing to do with Netflix) it's a really good feature, I don't think its integrated into Netflix.

[NoshowJones]

This may sound a bit stupid, but it's true. When I download torrents and want to watch a movie with a wide screen, you know like looking through a letterbox, I found a way to cover my whole screen, it worked well for months, and now the facility I used has just disappeared, and now I can't do it. I bet no one knows what happened. It is just one big mystery.

[Daffy D]

2 hours ago, possum1931 said:

This may sound a bit stupid, but it's true. When I download torrents and want to watch a movie with a wide screen, you know like looking through a letterbox, I found a way to cover my whole screen, it worked well for months, and now the facility I used has just disappeared, and now I can't do it. I bet no one knows what happened. It is just one big mystery.

Depends where the lost facility was before it got lost. 

 

You should have settings on the video player (VLCPlayer) and also on the TV.