Port Forwarding Wizard 4.7

Port forwarding, in practice, is easy to set up. Find out the port you need to open for an application, create a rule in the router's management interface, and enable the rule. For commonly used ports, such as 25 for SMTP or 443 for HTTPS, creating the port forwarding rule in most routers, very often, requires nothing more than clicking a checkbox to enable. However, you can often run into problems with port forwarding in actual execution. Many factors can cause problems with port forwarding?networking hardware, software, NAT, ISP blocking ports, and more. I had a frustrating issue recently trying to get traffic through port 443 in my network, which is why a product called Port Forwarding Wizard caught my eye. I shelled out $30 for the Home Version. You shouldn't. Save your money.

What It Does
Port Forwarding Wizard's website states that the product will "Infinite port forwarding until the destination IP address is reached." Despite the awkward phrasing, this is the description of what a port-forwarding rule does when configured on a router with the router's own software. However, there are some benefits the Port Forwarding Wizard claims it provides: it can forward traffic using SSL port forwarding even if the application does not support SSL. However, most applications that connect to the Internet have native SSL support; if an app doesn't, it's likely not one I would deploy on any network I was administering. Perhaps this capability is useful for legacy software.

In any case, that SSL port-forwarding feature doesn't come cheap: the free, trial version (which can only be used for 15 days, doesn't support that feature. Nor does the $30 Home Version I purchased (although I didn't need that capability for testing, anyway). For SSL port forwarding plus other features such as integrated web interface and a file sharing tool and command-line port forwarding, you need the Pro or Enterprise versions which are priced at $79.95 and $200, respectively. Each higher-tiered version supports more simultaneous connections, with the vendor stating that the Enterprise version supports up to 10,000 connections on a Windows Server.

Those advanced capabilities sound intriguing, but I only tested the Home version to find out if it would remedy my port-forwarding issues. It didn't, and I would think twice about purchasing a more expensive version.

To make matter worse, the sparse help text provided on the vendor's website is rife with sloppy, and seemingly, poorly-translated English.? I am currently in communication with the vendor?which is difficult because the only contact information on the website is an email form that promises a response within 24 hours, making getting help a slow, painful process.

Testing
I needed port 443 opened on my network to test a particular application. I had a connection straight to a cable modem. I first tried port forwarding on the modem. The port remained closed. I then downloaded a trial version of the Port Forwarding Wizard. When I used the wizard, the port opened. I was quite impressed and curious, thinking the software might have some way of circumventing any ISP's or other types of?restrictions for port forwarding. I eagerly upgraded the trial version to a full version.

That's where the trouble began. After installing the full version, the port was no longer open. I had no log files or message indicating what the problem was and no configuration changes were made to the testbed. So it seems the software did as advertised and then stopped working?not good.

I wanted to give the Port Forwarding Wizard another shot. Since the version I purchased can only be installed on one computer, I went to my second testbed connected to a different network and tried downloading and installing the software again.

My testbed has? a router between a DSL modem and my internal network. Enabling a port forwarding rule on the?Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR3700)?opened the port I needed. I disabled the rule and wanted to see if the Port Forwarding Wizard would somehow bypass the fact that the router was closed and still managed to at best, forward the traffic. At the least, I expected it to give some diagnostics as to what was going on.

Neither happened. With or without the PF Wizard running, my traffic would only forward if I had port forwarding configured on the Netgear router.? Check out the two images below. The first shows port 443 closed without me manually entering a forwarding rule in the router and with a port forwarding rule for port 443 created in Port Forwarding Wizard 4.7. (Note: In?the images, the yellow box surounds the rule created in the Port Forwarding Wizard, and the red box surrounds the rule in the router).

The next screenshot shows that the port only opens once I create that rule in the Netgear software:

Port Forwarding Wizard does not seem to do anything at all that's worth thirty bucks. It demonstrated flaky, inexplicable behavior on both of my test networks.

The PF Wizard has some additional capabilities, even in the Home version I tested. For example, there is a selection for adding a port forwarding rule into the actual router settings. When I first tested this, I got a message, "Failed to find router." The message also warned that firewalls have to be disabled and UPnP had to be enabled.? Doing both still did not allow the software to add a rule to my router. Quite frankly, if you know enough to disable firewalls in both an operating system and router and set up UPnP, you likely don't need the Port Forwarding Wizard software anyway.

In my network with a router and DSL modem having the Port Forwarding wizard seems to make not a whit of difference for opening and closing ports. I don't get the purpose of this software

Hard to Determine Its Usefulness
To date, the company hasn't been able to give me a satisfactory answer on what went wrong or what the app offers (in the version I tested) over native port forwarding on a device. If they're ever able to give me a better result or a better answer, I'll consider updating the review. The fact that the software wasn't able offer any port forwarding benefits whatsoever on two different test networks makes me quite confident, however, in awarding Port Forwarding Wizard 4.7 1 star.

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