Broadcasters setting up their own streaming inevitably discover the business of "ports", an essential part of the transmission path.
Many stream servers, e.g., Shoutcast, require two sequential ports, often 8000 & 8001 to be Open, a process done within a firewall or router or both.
Getting to the question in this thread, when ports are set OPEN for purposes of streaming, what goes on when the stream signs off?
When the stream software is closed the ports are still marked OPEN by the firewall/router, is this safe? Or, should operators take the extra trouble to close the ports?
A port can be opened by either your computer or your firewall/router.
By default, all ports should be closed to incoming connections on your router.
If you are using something like Shoutcast, then you need to explicitly open up that port on your router.
On your computer, a port is only open if there is a service listening on it. I believe (but I'm not 100% sure) that the port is closed if there is no service there.
It's generally considered unsafe to have a port open on your router that you're not using. It's just like having an unlocked door - no one may actually come in, but they could. That being said, if your computer's updates are current (to eliminate exploits such as buffer overflows), and there are no viruses or malware that could listen in on that port, you probably would be OK.
I don't worry about short times when I'm not running, say, an Internet stream, but if I decide to take it down for long periods of time, I close off the ports on the router.
So what are you to do, open and close the ports after you sign off of your streaming? Is there a way to automate that?
It happens by default on your computer.
I do it manually on the router side. You can pretty much automate anything if you want to write software to do so. To me, it's not worth the bother, as I'm either not streaming, or I'm streaming 24/7.
all my computers that don't need open ports are behind a secondary locked down DD-WRT (Linksys/Cisco) router and my barix, DVR for Camera's, etc that need open ports are on the primary (Xfinity) router and passworded with a non default complex password.
i also have made image clones of all my computer system drives.
Part15Engineer said: "I also have made image clones of all my computer system drives."
How do you get image clones of your drives?
How are these image clones put to use to recover a system?
http://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html
you need a destination drive that is the same size as the source drive.
Super thank you part 15 engineer.
This information will save KDX some day I'm sure!
Hope everyone takes the hint and backs up.
Part 15 Engineer said "you need a destination drive that is the same size as the source drive."
That actually depends on the software you use to clone your system drive. Generally, you do need a drive that is AT LEAST as large as the source drive.