Windows 10: Port Forwarding vs Plug and Play. What Should I Use?

I've read a lot of articles suggesting to disable plug and play on my router or my NAS and enable port forwarding in its place. The articles or people claim its easy. I want to do it but since I'm a bit of a newbie, the venture sounds pretty daunting.

Given that I never took computer science as a major, is this something that I should try to do? I do want to substantially increase the security of my network. I want to do this very badly; however, if it's going to take a long time, it may not be worth it.

I live with 3 other family members that all have various devices. Each family member probably regularly 2-3 devices that seem to connect to multiple ports (I may be wrong about this).

I've given static IP addresses to everyone's devices and that seemed like an ordeal in itself. It gets confusing when guests come over and I have to give permissions for guests to log in as a guest to my router. (My default setting is to not allow new devices to connect to my home network so nobody can hack into my network.)

So, would figuring out what port forwarding/triggering means and then implementing it worth the increase in security? Or should I just leave everything as plug and play. Is it that important in terms of security? Does the fact that my computer in which I would control everything is a Windows 10 Home make a difference?

From a Newbie in Need.

:)

 

How to configure Port Forwarding?

You dont say what the router is so we dont have a clue and you dont say why or for what you are port forwarding.
The best way is goto Guides for Port Forwarding a Router find your router and it will give you step by step instuctions on how to do it

 

Help with port forwarding!

Just for clarification: Port forwarding takes a packet that is addressed to your external (public) IP address and forwards if to an internal (private) IP address


First step:

Go to What's My IP Address? Networking Tools & More

Your External (public) IP address will be shown at the top of the page.

This is the IP address that other users on the internet will use to connect to you.

Second step:

Find your Internal (private) IP address.

This is the IP address of the Ethernet card in your PC

This IP address MUST be in one of the following ranges to be guarenteed to work:

10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255

Third step:

Open up the admin application for your router and look for port forwarding/private servers option.

The screen will have a source port number (tcp and udp) and will also have a destination IP address and port.

Example:

Your PC has a private IP of 192.168.0.2 and your run a game server that uses ports 2345 and 8977

In admin screen source ports will be 2345 and 8977 (an entry for each port will be needed)

Destination will be 192.168.0.2 port 2345 and 192.168.0.2 port 8977

Example screenshot of port forward screen http://www.kumagames.com/img/server setup/server_setup_04.jpg

 

How to configure Port Forwarding?

HI,

My router gets different IP addresses. Dynamic DNS is enabled.

I have to configure port forwarding in my router. While configuring port forwarding, I need to fill following details:

• Internal IP
• Internal Port
• Remote IP
• External Port
• Protocol (TCP/UDP)

Please guide me to configure Port Forwarding in my router.

Regards
UGN