Do I need for forward local ports?

Question

Do I need to forward these ports? Is there a way to do it on Windows 7? I've tried using a program named smart port forwarding but it crashes when the program is running. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You shouldn't need to forward those ports in order to be able to run the applications. Chrome and Steam are connecting through those ports to the internet because they are ones that the operating system says are available for outgoing connections and provided them with that unique port number when each application asked for it.

These applications should all run fine for you, without needing to open any ports. Opening a port is most always to let incoming traffic be accepted, not for outgoing traffic to be stopped. A telltale sign that a port is not open is that no connection can be made. If you tried to connect over the internet (port 80) to most random IP addresses, you won't be able to find anything, because the device at that IP address rejected your attempt to open that port to them. So because you are (I am assuming) able to successfully run both Chrome and Steam and have them be able to connect to the internet, you shouldn't be facing a port forwarding issue. The port numbers are just assigned essentially at random each time that an application needs to open an outgoing socket. (this being a simplification of the whole paradigm, but hopefully enough to be able to answer this question).

Edit: And yes, like @Rumesh-Eranga pointed out as well, port forwarding is done at the router level (on the internet router itself) and not at the computer level. It's a way of saying to the router "alright, any time this network receives a request to open port XYZ, send it to this computer that is connected to our local network."