What is the difference between "external port" and "internal port" in port forwarding?
If internal port is the port no. to which server is listening to for a specific (eg: HTTP request) service request; then how do you define external port?
1 Answer
In layman's terms: Your router has a public IP address (the "external" address). Your router also provides the network devices within your home network with private IP addresses (the "internal" addresses).
With the port it's the same thing. For example: a HTTP request will be send to your router's IP to port 80 (the "external port") and will be forwarded by your router to a device on your LAN, to the "internal port" (and one of your private/internal IP addresses).
A rule you could define in your router would be for example:
80 (external port) --forward to--> 192.168.100.100:80 (internal ip/port)
This would mean that all requests that reach the router on port 80 (from the internet) will be forwarded to the device with the IP 192.168.100.100 on the same port (port 80).
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