Antsmarching.org Forums - Dave Matthews Band Discussion - How do I forward the ports for my hardware firewall?

Hardware Firewalls and Routers
Routers have what is called NAT - Network Address Translation. Put simply it means that it will block all incoming connection attempts unless it is told otherwise. This means you need to open some ports. But you also need to do more than that, you also need to forward the ports. This is where the 'Translation' bit comes in.

Your router has 'ownership' of your (real) WAN* IP address and each PC connected to it is issued with a LAN** IP address. You need to tell the router that when traffic comes in on a certain port or port range it should let through and send it to your PC's LAN IP.
Here is a visual guide on how I set up my Router - it should help.

Static IP
You will also need to set up a static IP address. As mentioned, the router issues each PC connected to it with a LAN IP address. This can change however, for example when you reboot your PC.

Imagine that your pc has the LAN IP of 192.1.11.23. So you forward the BitTorrent ports to 192.1.11.23. Then you reboot your machine and when it comes back on, its LAN IP has changed to 192.1.11.24. Your port forwarding isn't going to work anymore as the ports aren't being forwarded to your PC anymore.

This is why you need to set up a Static IP, it gives your PC it's own permanent LAN IP. It'll never change, so the port forwarding will work!

Step by step instructions on how to set up a static IP are here.

Remember to do it on every pc that connects to the network.
*WAN = Wide Area Network - the internet basically
**LAN = Local Area Network - your internal network of PC's

This website will help you configure your router and set up a static IP. It covers nearly all of the routers available and also provides step by step instructions for common applications.