Open Ports on Your Router for MediaPortal

When you use MediaPortal you may need to forward ports in your router. A port forward allows incoming connection requests from the internet to go straight to MediaPortal.

Routers are not designed to allow incoming network requests. By forwarding ports you can work around this limitation.

Before you can forward a port you need to know the following things:

• The internal IP address of your router.
• Your media server's IP address.
• The TCP and UDP ports that need to be forwarded.

Use a VPN Instead

Have you considered using a VPN instead of forwarding a port? For most users, a VPN is a much simpler and more secure choice than forwarding a port.

We use and recommend NordVPN because not only is it the fastest VPN, it includes a new feature called Meshnet that makes forwarding a port no longer necessary for most applications. With NordVPN Meshnet, you can connect to your devices from anywhere in the world, completely secure, over a highly encrypted VPN tunnel.

When shopping for a VPN, make sure that they meet the following criteria:

• Your VPN provider should have a no-logs policy. This means that they do not keep any logs of any kind.
• Make sure that your VPN provider has lots of exit nodes all around the world.
• Check that your VPN will not affect your speed.
• Verify that your VPN provider uses WireGuard as the underlying protocol.
• Many people prefer a VPN provider that is not based in the United States.

This is the list of requirements that we used when we were shopping around for a VPN provider. There are lots of free, shady VPN providers out there that we looked at and dismissed.

Based in Panama, using diskless servers, and with over 6,100 servers in 61 countries, we can safely say that NordVPN satisfies all of these requirements.

Once you've set up your NordVPN account on multiple computers and enabled Meshnet, you can seamlessly access all of your devices as if they were on the same network. You don't even have to log in to your router. It's very simple.

Every time you click on one of our affiliate links, such as NordVPN, we get a little kickback for introducing you to the service. Think of us as your VPN wingman.

The easiest way to locate your router's IP address is to run our free Router Detector utility. The software is part of our Network Utilities suite of tools and it is completely free to use.

If you do not want to run the software, you can follow our Find Your Router IP Address guide.

We have Network Utilities software that can forward ports for you. Our Network Utilities software allows you to add port forwards and also remove them when you no longer need them to maximize your network security.

Alternatively you can do it by hand. The way to forward a port is:

• Log in to your router.
• Locate your routers port forwarding section.
• Type your media server's IP address into the correct box in your router.
• Put the TCP and UDP ports that you are forwarding for MediaPortal in the correct boxes in your router.

Frequently you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

You can choose your router from our list to see exactly how to forward ports for MediaPortal:

List of Routers - Customized for MediaPortal

Here is a list of the ports that need to be forwarded for MediaPortal:

MediaPortal - Default

• TCP: 554, 1433, 3306, 4322, 8080, 31245, 31456
• UDP: 554, 1434, 31245

Those are the steps for forwarding ports in your router for MediaPortal.

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