Port Forewarding

[DevilMayCry42]

So, what's it about? Would forwarding a port help improve my Team Fortress 2 pings? Is it safe? As far as I understand, it bypasses the hardware firewall in the router, so are there any significant risks associated with it? What else would benefit from port forwarding?

Any help is appreciated, sorry for so many questions!

[GoNz0]

i doubt it will improve your pings by more than 1ms, you understand wrong as it simply directs traffic to a fixed ip (your pc) helping inbound traffic find the right way. the hardware firewall will still work though.

[Jay]

will make no difference as NAT is already doing what a port forward would do.

[GoNz0]

if it has NAT ?

[moogle]

Port Forwarding only helps if you are hosting some sort of server, be it game or web server (Any app that is listening on a port for a remote connection). When you play TF2 you connect to the servers ip and port and you already have a direct connection (they are connected to you too) and theres no need for port forwarding, and the router knows to send packets on X port to your computers lan ip. You don't really need it unless you are hosting something and it really wont reduce pings. Only a new faster ISP will or a closer server will give you lower pings.