No, that makes sense. From a security point of view, you just block everything inbound, and only open what is needed as it becomes needed.

But that's only for traffic that originates outside the firewall/router. For traffic that originates inside the firewall going to the outside, I'd normally expect pretty much everything to be open, with the firewall allowing reply/acknowledgment traffic to pass through as well. I'm sure there's a technical term for that, but I'm buggered if I can think fo it right now.

BOFH?

That would piss me off massively. If I had to phone my ISP every time I wanted to host a game...

Which is why most sensible ISPs give you some way of doing it yourself. Even if it rarely works properly (I'm looking at you, BT).

Hmm, BT don't block shit do they (other than bad stuff). I just forward stuff on my router and it works (I'm on BT, like).

You've got Broadband? :O

If it's not being explicitly forwarded to your PC, then it's almost definitely blocked by default at your router. Otherwise it would be an open route into your network.

I doubt BT universally block anything inside their network before it gets to your router.

Yes (cheer)

I'll probably still be on 8meg when you lot are on gigabit internet.

Internet access at uni is rubbish. I'm being limited by the speed of the 54MB wifi connection :(

*downloads the internet*

I'm limited by the 100mbit network I'm on :((

(At work that is. At home I'm limited by the bathroom light switch (fail) )

Not totally uncommon in business, to be fair.

For outwards access to be very restricted?

I guess I'm in an odd position that my internal IP at work is actually my external IP and as far as I know there none or very few restrictions on ports.

Aye, business is a whole other kettle of gloves.

I was talking more about the ISP managing the router, but yeah, I'm forever being prevented from FTPing and such. And it's a fucking miracle if my Lync client works.

Them whitelisting us did the trick, so it wasn't a blocked port on the pc.