Purpose:
I'm making a program that will set up a dedicated server (software made by game devs) for a game with minimal effort. One common step in making the server functional is port forwarding by making a port forward rule on a router.
Me and my friends have been port forwarding through conventional means for many years with mixed results. As such I am hoping to build a function that will forward a port on a router when given the internal ip of the router, the internal ip of the current computer,the port and the protocol. I have looked for solutions for similar problems, but I found the solutions difficult to understand since i'm not really familiar with the socket module. I would prefer not to use any programs that are not generally installed on windows since I plan to have this function work on systems other than my own.
Approaches I have explored:
Creating a bat file that issues commands by means of netsh, then running the bat.
Making additions to the settings in a router found under Network -> Network Infrastructure (I do not know how to access these settings programmaticly).
(I'm aware programs such as GameRanger do this)
Using the Socket Module.
If anyone can shed some light how I can accomplish any of the above approaches or give me some insight on how I can approach this problem another way I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.
Edit: Purpose
I'm not sure if that's possible, as much as I know, ports aren't actually a thing their just some abstraction convention made by protocols today and supported by your operating system that allows you to have multiple connections per one machine,
now sockets are basically some object provided to you by the operating system that implements some protocol stack and allows you to communicate with other systems, the API provides you some very nice API called the socket API which allows you use it's functionality in order to communicate with other computers, Port forwarding is not an actual thing, it just means that when the operating system of the router when receiving incoming packets that are destined to some port it will drop them if the port is not open, think of your router as some bouncer or doorman, standing in the entrance of a building, the building is your LAN, your apartment is your machine and rooms within your apartment are ports, some package or mail arrives to your doorman under the port X, a port rule means on IP Y and Port X of the router -> forward to IP Z and port A of some computer within the LAN ( provides and implements the NAT/PAT ) so what happens if we'll go back to my analogy is something such as this: doorman receives mail destined to some port, and checks if that port is open, if not it drops the mail if it is it allows it to go to some room within some apartment.. (sounds complex I know apologize) my point is, every router chooses to implement port rules or port blocking a little bit different and there is no standard protocol for doing, socket is some object that allows you program to communicate with others, you could create some server - client with sockets but that means that you'll need to create or program your router, and I'm not sure if that's possible,
what you COULD do is:
every router provides some http client ( web client ) that is used to create and forward ports, maybe if you read about your router you could get access to that client and write some python http script that forwards ports automatically
another point I've forgot is that you need to make sure you're own firewall isn't blocking ports, but there's no need for sockets / python to do so, just manually config it
How to make a port forward rule in Python 3 in windows?