Netgear FVS318N User Manual

Inbound Rules (Port Forwarding)

If you have enabled Network Address Translation (NAT), your network presents one IP 
address only to the Internet, and outside users cannot directly access any of your local 
computers (LAN users). (For information about configuring NAT, see 

on page 27.) However, by defining an inbound rule you can make a local server 

(for example, a web server or game server) visible and available to the Internet. The rule 
informs the firewall to direct inbound traffic for a particular service to one local server based 
on the destination port number. This process is also known as port forwarding.

Whether or not DHCP is enabled, how the computer accesses the server’s LAN address 
impacts the inbound rules. For example:

If your external IP address is assigned dynamically by your ISP (DHCP enabled), the IP 
address might change periodically as the DHCP lease expires. Consider using Dynamic 
DNS so that external users can always find your network (see 

If the IP address of the local server computer is assigned by DHCP, it might change when 
the computer is rebooted. To avoid this, use the Reserved (DHCP Client) feature in the 

Log

The setting that determines whether packets covered by this rule 
are logged. The options are:

• Always. Always log traffic that matches this rule. This is useful 

when you are debugging your rules.

•  Never. Never log traffic that matches this rule.

All rules

NAT IP

The setting that specifies whether the source address of the 
outgoing packets on the WAN should be assigned the address of 
the WAN interface or the address of a different interface. You can 
specify these settings only for outbound traffic of the WAN 
interface. The options are:

• WAN Interface Address. All the outgoing packets on the WAN 

are assigned to the address of the specified WAN interface.

•  Single Address. All the outgoing packets on the WAN are 

assigned to the specified IP address, for example, a secondary 
WAN address that you have configured.

The NAT IP drop-down list is available only when the WAN 

mode is NAT. If you select Single Address, the IP address 
specified should fall under the WAN subnet.

IPv4 LAN WAN rules

IPv4 DMZ WAN rules