Great question—let’s break this down clearly.

First, a key clarification: The method you’re describing (using Windows Control Panel to set up port forwarding) isn’t configuring your router at all. Instead, it’s leveraging Windows’ built-in Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) feature, which turns your Windows PC into a small-scale NAT gateway itself.

Here’s the full breakdown:

• Normally, router-based port forwarding tells your main network router to direct incoming internet traffic on a specific port to a device behind its NAT layer.
• But when you use the Control Panel steps you mentioned, you’re setting up port forwarding rules on your Windows machine, not the router. This works because your PC is acting as the network gateway (via ICS) for other devices, or you’re forwarding ports to the PC itself.

Let’s map to the steps you outlined to confirm:

• Open Control Panel → View network connections
• Right-click the adapter connected to your router → Properties
• Click the "Settings" button (this becomes available once ICS is enabled on the adapter)
• Navigate to the Services tab → Add, where you define your port forwarding rules

These rules tell Windows to take incoming traffic on a specified port and forward it to a target IP/port on your local network. Since Windows is handling the NAT in this scenario, you don’t need to access the router’s admin interface—because the router isn’t the one doing the forwarding anymore.

A quick caveat: If your router is still the main gateway for your network, this Windows-level port forwarding won’t make the target device accessible from the internet unless you first set up port forwarding on the router to send traffic to your Windows PC. But if you’re using ICS, your PC is the gateway, so its own rules handle the traffic routing.

Content sourced from Stack Exchange, question author: Tono Nam