Portforwarding question.

[BlueBean]

And no, I'm not asking how to portforward. I already know how to do that. my question however, is it a good idea? How many people would be able to connect? what are the risks? I'm tempted to get a server at this point, But I don't wanna waste to much money, As my real life situation doesn't allow for careless spending. What do you guys think?

[hedgy]

You just open a way for people to connect to your server. Without this 0 people would be able to join (unless you decide to use hamachi or something, but that's basicly port forwarding through another network).

With port forwarding as many people your computer can handle will be able to join.

Cheapest is to host it yourself which requires port forwarding. But it'll always cost something, you need an stable internet connection & electricity. 

[abhi2011]

Portforwarding has it's risk. It could allow hackers to gain access to your pc using an open port. Portforawrding basically "drills a hole" through your router to allow packets. So it might be possible to find any open ports using an application or something and allow unwanted packets to be sent through.

[BlueBean]

> Portforwarding has it's risk. It could allow hackers to gain access to your pc using an open port. Portforawrding basically "drills a hole" through your router to allow packets. So it might be possible to find any open ports using an application or something and allow unwanted packets to be sent through.

but will it be dangerous? A friend of mine told me my ISP will get all pissy if I do it :I

[Gwen]

Just having your computer connected to the internet is dangerous. Do you torrent? If you do you are basically doing the same thing, only portforwarding is more of a permanent setting.

Portforwarding does allow another port through your firewall/router, but there are already other known ports that are open anyways. If a good hacker wants your computer he will get in regardless if you are portforwarding. By sharing your eclipse information you are just give an easier access for someone to attempt to get into your system, but the odds of this are slim.

You would have to have a lot of connections to your port for your ISP to get mad. The chances of an eclipse game getting that many connections is slim.

[abhi2011]

But why would the ISP get pissy if there are 2 much connections through a particular port?

[Gwen]

Because they will want to charge you more money for having a lot of bandwidth usage. Most ISP's have different tiers for their service. Home use is usually cheaper, but they dont expect to have a lot of traffic. Usually if you are running a server that would require a lot of traffic they would want you to use their buisness level service that costs more, but like i said the odds of you getting that much traffic is slim, and they would send a notice that you are using too much traffic… but you are not going to get in "trouble".

[Dark_Marine_123]

I cant remember the last time my ISP got pissy at me, and Ive ran EE2.7 and a Teamspeak 2 server at the same time.

Though, if you have comcast, I could see why they'd get angry. All they want is money.

Anyway, opening a port isnt exactly as bad as you might think. Modern routers will automatically block traffic from users who try a port scan on your router, which is an instant failure on their part. And the good hackers? They wont be targeting you.

[BlueBean]

Alright. Thanks :>