Port forwarding is the process of redirecting computer signals to follow specific electronic paths to your computer. If the computer signal can find its way to your computer a few milliseconds faster, you will see dramatic increases in the speed of your game or your downloads.

That pencil-thin network cable (or wireless network adapter) on the back of your computer contains 65,536 microscopic paths. Your network cable is like a major highway, except that your network cable has 65,536 lanes, and each lane has a toll booth. We call each lane a “gate.” Your Internet signal is made up of millions of little cars driving along those 65,536 lanes. We call these little cars “transmission packets.” Computer transmission packets can travel very quickly (up to thousands of miles per second), but they adhere to a stop-and-go set of rules, requiring them to stop at every major network intersection as if it were a border crossing between countries. At each intersection, the packet must do three things:

In some cases, packets sent by hackers are captured and held at the crossroads, where they are then dissolved into random electrons. When this happens, it is called "packet filtering" or "packet sniping."

Each piece of software on your computer is typically programmed to send its packets out a specific port. These port choices are often established as programming standards in the computer industry. Therefore, your router must be instructed to allow packets out of these ports, otherwise you will slow down the speed at which they are sent to/from your computer: