port forwarding question?

Question

I am trying to open specific ports in my Netgear WGR614v7 so that I can get an NAT 0 rating. I know the ports that I need to open, but my question is that some ports are marked TCP and some are UDP. On my router there is a tab that is marked TCP/UDP and then it can arrow down into the seperate catergories of TCP and UDP individually. My question is do I have to put them under the appropriate tcp or udp or will the one marked both be sufficent

Answer 1

Yes, you have to specify which port numbers are TCP and which are UDP, as they are different protocols. Most (or all) router filters check the type of protocol (in this case, TCP or UDP) before they check the port number.



Most applications work with one of them at a time or with only one at all. So you should get information about each application or upper layer protocol (like HTTP, FTP or SMTP) in order to know exactly whether it uses TCP or UDP. If you don't know which one to use, you can add the same port for both protocols, which would mean two different entries.



The following pages show the most common port number assignments by protocol (TCP/UDP):



1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_number



2. http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/port-table.html

Answer 2

yes you have to put them under the appropriate tcp orudp

Answer 3

Just make sure you don't use the exclusive ports. I recommend using higher numbered ports. see this link:

http://www.iss.net/security_center/advice/Exploits/Ports/

Also, make sure that the port you're using is not occupied.