I recently bought a AX2400 router. I bought it to use Xfinity Xfi as a modem and have a separate router to handle network routing. One of the practical reasons is that I wanted to do port mapping and open some ports to route inbound traffic to a device in my private network that is running a webserver. My main concern with this is that apparently this is a pretty unsafe way to expose a server to the public & it can be pretty exploitable.
The question. Is there any known way to do port forwarding without virtually disabling every security protocol my computer-router have?
If you open a port and expose something to the Web, there's always risks involved. A port is either open or closed/stealth. There's no security inbetween, regardless if you do it on a home router or on some professional device.
A server needs an open port. If you have issues with opening a port, you won't be able to reach it from the outside. When a server is exposed, make sure you have a decent firewall running on it (hiding it behind a router with NAT is not a firewall).
