Buying and configuring a new router , especially if it is a wireless router , can become an exercise as complicated as it is overwhelming, especially when we consider that, in most cases, many users tend to know almost nothing about of wireless networks.
Because of this, it is important to understand, at least, the basic concepts of how a router works, and how our home network itself works, since this will help us when it comes to solving basic problems that may arise, or updating the system when the internet connection all of a sudden start to freak out.
In addition, it could also be of considerable help to ensure that we always obtain the best possible speeds, something important when we have a high-speed connection (such as fiber) contracted, and we observe that we are not enjoying all the speed that we could actually have.
Router ports become, for example, an important element. In fact, routers have two types of connections that we can find on the back: LAN ports and WAN ports. As we will see, while the WAN port connects to the modem (which is what connects to the Internet), the LAN port connects to the computer. In this sense, most routers have four LAN ports.
In the case of routers, for example, they all have a total of 65536 ports , with a total of three groups of ports, each of which has a specific function.
For example, ports 0 to 1023 are reserved for the computer’s operating system, especially port 80 for HTTP or port 25 for SMTP. Ports 1024 through 49151 are registered ports, used primarily by applications and games. And, finally, we find ports from 49152 to 65535 , which are characterized by being private or dynamic ports, corresponding to the various applications that need, for example, to connect to a server (this is the case of P2P download clients, among others).
What is opening ports useful for and how to do it?
With some games and applications it may be necessary to open one or more ports, or configure port forwarding on the home router. This is quite useful, especially considering that ports are often closed in order to help prevent unauthorized access to the home network. For this reason, opening additional ports on the router could decrease the overall security of the network.
What’s more, we must maintain certain precautions, in particular when we open ports to give access to a certain game or applications to download torrents, so we will have to make sure that it is absolutely necessary. In some cases, what could be blocking access is the firewall of the computer or the router itself, so a good option is to try to disable it temporarily to make sure that it is not what is causing the problem .
For this reason, it is necessary to open specific ports for some programs and games to work properly. This is because, when video games are online or a network application is used, sometimes they may not work, so it is necessary to access the router and proceed to open the specific ports that the program in question needs. .
Obtaining the IP address of the device
Before opening the router ports it is necessary to know what the IP address of our device is ; that is, where we are going to run the application in question.
At the time of knowing it, the process is as simple as opening the CMD console in Windows, executing the ipconfig command and checking the value of IPv4 Address , which will be our private IP address of our computer.
Activating automatic port opening
Fortunately, today most of the most current routers have an automatic port opening function , known as UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), which consists of a protocol that offers the possibility of communicating with applications. compatible, and automatically open the necessary ports, and redirect them to the devices when requested.
The use of this protocol can be very helpful in avoiding that we have to carry out the opening of the ports manually.
To activate it, we must access the configuration interface of our router , by typing in the browser the IP address of the gateway (in most cases it is usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1), then we access the router with username and password.
In general, the options to enable this protocol are found in a specific section, or in the sections related to NAT configuration . In any case, just check the box where we find the possibility to Activate the UPnP protocol , or UPnP Enable .
This will make the process much easier, so it will avoid having to do it manually.
