TR Forums

Are there any disadvantages to port forwarding? Performance issues? or Security risks? etc.
Thanks

Generally speaking, no. You're obviously opening yourself up a little, but usually it's for a specific program that uses that port for something that you tell it to. You should be fine.

In general, performance should not be an issue. Corner cases where it could be problematic are:
1) The device doing the forwarding is grossly underpowered or has buggy firmware (cheap consumer routers can be hit-or-miss).
2) The forwarded connection is very high bandwidth and/or extremely sensitive to latency (probably only an issue for real-time applications on an internal network... for pretty much any Internet app, the bandwidth and latency of the broadband connection will be the limiting factor).

Security is a trickier question. You're basically exposing whatever service is running on that port to the outside world, so the size of the security hole you're creating really depends on how secure that service is. For something like OpenSSH, I'd say the size of the hole is negligible if you're using strong passwords or key-based authentication. OTOH if you're doing something silly like exposing unprotected Windows folder shares to the Internet, you're hanging the digital equivalent of a "kick me" sign on your back.

The reason I ask is that I've recently started getting kicked from COD4 servers with a Punkbuster message that says "Losing Key packets 9005".

No idea what that means. Could be your router, could be your ISP connection, could be a server-side bug, could be a bug in COD4. Have you tried their support forums? (I'm assuming they have them...)

Bad troubleshooters start changing stuff before they determine the problem.

The fact that it is a recent problem suggests that the problem is due to a change, which is more likely to occur on the client (well, unless you relocated). Broken PB update, installation of AV software (with bundled firewall), MS hotfix overwriting Windows firewall settings (up to and including turning it back on again), etc.

Doing a google search of "losing key packets 9005" returns a lot of other people having the same problem, and it's not specific to COD4. That led me to believe that the common link is punkbuster. Someone in a forum post suggested port forwarding, so I thought I'd explore that possibility. Reading up a little on port forwarding made me think it may be a good idea anyway, at least from a performance standpoint. I'll update punkbuster and see if it makes any difference. Any other thoughts.

*update* Updated Punkbuster and the problem remains. Confused

Had an online chat with Time Warner RoadRunner. They refreshed the signal coming from their server. I powered down my pc, modem, and router. Waited a couple of minutes, and powered up modem, router, and pc (in that order). Everything seems to be running fine now. Played a couple of rounds of COD4 without a hitch. Good to go.
Thanks.