How safe is port-forwarding?

[Eggy_Rosevelt_91]

Hi ! I’ve been curious to ask this question for a while.

Me and some friends would love to play SRB2 together but server making is not as easy as it seems. It seems like the only way to have a private game of some sorts, or a personal server, is to make a master server (or use direct connection).

I have heard to make a master server you must port-forward your Wi-Fi, but I use a family shared Wi-Fi and I do not wish for hackers or anything bad to happen if I were to port forward.

Apologies if this is a bit of a stupid question to ask; I am unfortunately not very knowledgeable when it comes to these things.

 

[time gear]

Depends on how much you trust your friends. If you don't give out your IP to anyone malicious, nothing will happen. If you're only setting up a private game and inviting your friends then port forwarding is basically just a peer to peer connection in which people you trust are the only factors involved.

Even for public games though, doing something such as injecting malicious code through an established connection to you is very unlikely. There's a lot of multiplayer games aside from SRB2 these days that use direct peer to peer connections and it's almost always fine. There is always the risk of bad actors, even people you think you can trust, but the vast majority of the time nothing will happen.

 

[amperbee]

It also depends on your device and what programs do you have running on it.

Port forwarding by itself is pretty safe, as all it means is that external devices not on your network are now able to reach you and connect to you through a particular port. By itself this doesn't mean much, as it needs a service or a program to be "listening" to that same port (to "listen" means something like "expecting connections") for it to serve any purpose. In this case, that listening program would be your SRB2 server waiting for players.

Security issues can arise if you're opening more ports than you plan to watch, or if you've got other programs listening to these ports.
It's possible that an outdated program might have some sort of vulnerability related to connections, which someone with too much time in their hands could exploit, but as long as you keep things up to date and you keep only the right ports open for what you want to do, you will be fine.

If you would like to be extra safe, only open ports when you want to host, then close them when you're done. That way you'll be in control of when can your computer be reached, and how.
And maybe set up your computer's firewall so only the programs you choose are able to make connections, though this one might be a little tricky to do if you have other programs or games that do the same. But if you have the time and patience, why not?

 

[Eggy_Rosevelt_91]

Understand, appreciate the advice =]

Post automatically merged: Jan 5, 2025

your device and what programs do you have running on it.

I mostly have been playing SRB2 on my steam deck. Although I don’t have much installed on it.

Depends on how much you trust your friends. If you don't give out your IP to anyone malicious

I embarrassingly assumed that everyone had to be connected to the same Wi-Fi to direct connect. (I don’t play online games much, nor have I used any direct connect features lol)