How to port forward Unifi on TP-Link router

Learn how to port forward your Unifi. If you keep getting dropped while playing online games, port forwarding will benefit you a lot. Not only for playing online games, but port forward also can help to improve the peer-to-peer file transfer speed.

Port forwarding is literally a way to forward a port through your router’s firewall to a designated device on your home network. It is all thanks to a Network Address Translation (NAT) which directs all traffic through the router to every single IP address in your home network.

Note: I’m using the default router provided by TM which is TP-Link Archer C1200 wireless router.

How to port forward Unifi on TP-Link router

First, you need to set up a static IP address in the device that you are forwarding a port to. Read this guide on how to set up a static IP address in Windows 10. Keep the IP address.

Take note on the IP address and then continue with the following steps.

Open any internet browser.
Go to http://192.168.0.1.
Enter your login:
- Username/ID: admin
- Password: admin
Click Login.
Select Advanced tab.
Select NAT Forwarding menu.
Select Virtual Servers sub-menu.
On this page, you’ll see the table with an option to add (+ Add) or delete (– Delete).
Click on the green button labeled + Add and enter the information per following:
- Service Type – The name of this entry, can be anything for you to remember what the entry is about.
- External Port – This is the port that will be open on the router. You can use any number between 1 and 65353 but some ports are already taken by standard services and common applications. To be safe, you can refer to this page to pick your port.
- Internal IP – Enter the IP address of the device. In this case, it’ll be the IP address of your Windows 10 computer from the beginning of this tutorial.
- Internal Port – Use the same port as External Port.
- Protocol – Select the protocol that you want to forward this port over. Just select TCP, it is widely used for email, peer-to-peer file sharing, and streaming media.
Check the Enable This Entry.
Click OK button to save the changes.

Test your port forwarding rule

It is important to test whether your port forwarding rule is a success or not.

The following open port checker is a tool you can use to check your external IP address and detect open ports on your connection. This tool is useful for finding out if your port forwarding is set up correctly or if your server applications are being blocked by a firewall.

Open any internet browser.
Go to https://www.yougetsignal.com/.
Select Port Forwarding Tester.
Enter your IP address.
Enter your port number.
Click the Check button.

You should receive a message like “Port XXX is open on [Your IP]”. If the port is reported as closed, double check the settings in the port forwarding menu on your router and your IP and port number in the tester.