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I am having issues port forwarding my router in order to let devices on my LAN connect to a server on a PC (also in my LAN). I have entered the configuration page for the router and choose Applications & Gaming > Port Range Forward and entered the application name, here is my first doubt, is the application name essential? I am running a node.js server and have entered the name of the main javascript file (server) and also entered "node" but they did not work. I enter the port range, since I want a single port I set the values equivalent in both fields and finally my computers private IP 192.168... I did not have any success with this so I tried to setup a static IP address within windows 8 but that yielded no results.

2 Answers 2

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The name is irrelevant, it is just for you, the user, to identify each port.

When setting up a port forward, there are somethings to do.

First, assigning a static IP. This can be done from within Windows, and should only be done if specifying an IP outside of the DHCP range. If you are within the range, you may encounter IP conflicts with other device son the network. You could also, which is my recommendation, set up a static IP lease on your router, by MAC address. This way you will be able to take your computer from place to place (laptop?) and will not have to reconfigure your network each time.

Next, ids the actual port forward. You should have a couple of fields that are looking for input: name, source port, destination port, destination address.

The name can be anything you want, and the source port will be the port that you want to open to the world. If you so choose, you can make the destination port different to match the listening port of your server, and the destination address should be that static IP.

Could you go into more detail as to what exactly is not working for you?

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  • Well I have a small http server listening on port xxxx and whenever I type my ip address into a web browser say in my phone, with the pc's IP : xxxx I get no response, however it does take a while to give me an error message, not sure if there is something I should enable.
    – AlanZ2223
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:18
  • I also changed the network settings for my wifi network connection inside of the IPv4 properties to use a static IP. Was I supposed to change something within the router to complete the process?
    – AlanZ2223
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:21
  • An HTTP server by default listens on port 80. If you type an address into your web-browser, it will only scan port 80. You have specified XXXX, so I am guessing that means that you changed the default, to specify a port with a url, do the following for your URL. http://192.168.0.100:port/index.htm. The IP can either be assigned as static on either the router, or the computer, you should not do it on both. My suggestion is to do it on the router.
    – Matt Clark
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:23
  • I have solved it, the error was not in how I setup port forwarding but in how my server worked. It does seem very odd, the ip I provided was 127.0.0.1 and a port, I simply changed it to my private ip address 192.168... and it works now.
    – AlanZ2223
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:48
  • 127.0.0.1 is localhost, and will always redirect to the machine you are using, so from the computer that is the server, this will work. From all others, you need to specify the physical IP.
    – Matt Clark
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:52
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The application name is not relevant. It is for informational purposes only. The only things that are important are the start and end port numbers, the protocol and followed by the IP address of the machine on the LAN where packets will be forwarded to. Check the Enable box to turn the forwarding rule on.

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