Forwarded ports won't necessarily show as open, depends on the firewall. If they get probed some go into stealth mode and shows up as closed.
Usually the source port and destination port are the same. The idea is that you are making the router "invisible" and pretending that your PC is connected directly to the WWW. For example if an email server is sending email on port 25 (source port) you will receive it on port 25 (destination port). A router's port forwarding options allow you to "re-direct" ports when needed (not usually) to different ports BUT , to reiterate, you will seldomly find that necessary.... 99% of the time source and destination will be the same.
From my notes: Source - Any Destination Ports - # here (is what I have, not sure what it means though). You may have to do a trial & error. I did reset the router (to factory defaults) a few times during new installs of WHS.
This is what the actiotek guy told me as well source port to any and destination port is coming from the client (dont know if that is correct term). Willko says it should be the same. Can someone else in the know careto chime in on the subject please? thx
What is the service that you are creating a forwarding rule for? When I said they will almost always be the same I was referring to well known ports and established services. For instance, in the case of mail and web site traffic ports 25, 110, 80 and 443 are almost always the same for source and destination. Other services using higher ranges can/will differ, especially services using the dynamic range. 0 to 1023 are the "well-known ports" - these are the ones where the source and destination will usually be the same and the services they carry are established industry standards. 1024 to 49151 are the "registered ports" and they are assigned by IANA for a specific service by request (usually the same port/destination). 49152–65535 are called dynamic ports and cannot be registered - they are used for temporary or custom services ( usually NOT the same port/destination) A "data packet" has a destination port (target) and also a source ( the port from which it originated). The "Any source/specific destination" setting allows the sending (source) of data from any port that is addressed to a specific destination (target). Setting the source port to ANY and a destination port to a specific value/range is common for torrent traffic.