What Is Port Forwarding in a VPN?

When you connect to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, the first thing that usually comes to mind is security. After all, your private data is being transmitted over the internet to the remote server where you are connected to. While the service guarantees you a certain level of security, there are still some threats that you need to be aware of. One of these threats is port forwarding. What is port forwarding in a VPN? In this blog post, we will discuss what is port forwarding in a VPN, its uses, and some things you should know about it.

What Is Port Forwarding?

When you connect to a VPN service, your computer will be assigned a random remote IP address that is used within the VPN network. This IP address is then exposed to the internet as a public facing IP address. Anyone on the internet can connect to this IP address and send packets to your computer over the network. For example, if you are connecting to a VPN service from Australia, then your IP address will be 73.126.x.x, where x is a number between 0 and 255. Let’s assume that you are using a wireless connection and not wired. When your WiFi network card receives a packet addressed to your computer with a destination IP address of 73.126.x.x, it will automatically forward the packet to your computer, assuming that it is still connected to the network card and it has an open port. If a firewall is installed on your computer, then this port forwarding behavior will be blocked because a firewall doesn’t forward ports by default.

Why Would I Use Port Forwarding In A VPN?

There are several reasons why you would use port forwarding in a VPN. The first and most obvious one is to connect to a different network than the one that is assigned to you. For example, if you have a home VPN server that you have set up for family and friends to connect to (most home VPN servers allow this by default), then you would usually want to forward ports 80 and 443 so that they can access your home network through the internet. The advantage of this is that you can allow access to only the IP addresses that you want to allow access to your network. There is also the option to allow access through a certain port or range of ports, which can help prevent attacks from trying to exploit security holes in specific ports. One more advantage of port forwarding in a VPN is that it can be used to extend the functionality of a VPN. For example, if you are running a site that has an HTTPS SSL certificate, then you can have your VPN service forward all HTTPS traffic to your site so that it can be accessed securely. In this way, you are not relying solely on the security of your VPN service, but you are also securing your site with a certificate.

How Do I Forward Ports In A VPN?

To forward ports in a VPN, you will need to edit the configuration file of your VPN service. There are 2 places that you can usually find this file. One is in the settings section and the other is in the virtual_private_network section. In both locations, you will need to add a new entry that looks like this:

{
"address": "10.0.0.1", 
"port_forwarding": [{
"local_port": 80, 
"remote_port": 80, 
"protocol": "tcp"
}, {
"local_port": 443, 
"remote_port": 443, 
"protocol": "tcp"
}], 
"options": {
"username": "user", 
"password": "password"
} 
}

What Are The Options For The Local Ports?

The local_port entry in the port_forwarding array determines which ports of your computer will be forwarded when you connect to a VPN. It should be noted that not all ports are available for use in this way. In particular, the ports used by the firewall program on your computer will not be forwarded by default. You can use the following table to determine which ports to forward and which to leave alone: