So, turns out Nintendo has a few support pages on their site to help you if you have any
network issues with your Switch or other Nintendo device.
But they're a bit questionable to say the least.
For example, here's a page where they talk about how to set up port forwarding.
If you don't know what that means, don't worry, I'll explain in a minute.
But let's take a look.
It says assign a network IP to your console, okay, and it has a link to another page we'll
see later.
Log in to your router settings, locate the port forwarding settings, all seems alright.
But then it gets to the part where it tells you which ports to forward, which are ALL of them
[Vine Boom Sound Effect]
[Meme Sound Effect: "Oh my god bruh. Aw hell naw man, what the ****"]
Now many of you already immediately recognize how absurd and potentially dangerous this
is, but for those of you who don't, let me explain.
When you're using a computer or other device, there are potentially many programs running
on it simultaneously, but they all need to share the same internet connection.
So to solve this, there are a bunch of what are called "ports", which you can sort of
think of like lanes on a highway.
Each application running will claim its own port and send out connections on it in so
called "packets" of data.
And they also listen on that port for any responses.
Now each packet contains info like which computer it came from and which port it's using.
And the responses will also have that info so the router knows where to send those responses,
to which device.
And just like your home has a public IP address, all devices that are connected to your router
have a local IP address, which is how the router can direct where to send various data.
But what do you do if you have some data packets that come in and aren't a response to anything,
they're just unsolicited?
That's where your router's firewall comes in.
By default, your router will just block such data, for starters because it wouldn't even
know which device in your network to send the information to.
And even if it did, you would have a whole bunch of bots from all over the internet constantly
probing all your ports to see if there are any applications running on any of them that
have vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
However, there are sometimes cases where you actually want to be able to accept unsolicited
data.
For example, a lot of video games, if the company doesn't want to set up their own servers
to host games on, then the game will have one player from the match be the host and
act like a temporary server, where the other players connect to that console and that console
runs the server.
And that game will use a certain port like 55555, or multiple, it might be a range of
them.
That is where port forwarding comes in.
It's basically like telling your router, "hey, if you get any unsolicited data trying to
access port 55555, let that through and send it directly to the console at whatever IP
address."
There are some minor risks to this that I won't go into, like for example, if another
application uses the same port while the game isn't running, generally forwarding a couple
game ports is not that big a deal.
But now you're probably starting to see the problem with Nintendo's advice.
It's effectively telling you to allow all connections that are unsolicited through your
router and go directly to your switch,
or whatever Nintendo console.
Apparently they don't have a standard set of ports that different games use.
So instead of maybe telling you which ports to forward for which specific game you're
worried about, they just tell you to forward literally every single port.
Now while this is absurd, does it mean that your network is immediately going to be hacked?
No, not necessarily.
Especially if you set up some safeguards, like setting a static IP on the game console
AND reserving the IP in your router settings to make sure no other device uses it.
Which is not what Nintendo says to do.
On another support page, they do show you how to set a static local IP for your switch
console.
And the method they give is also hilarious, but I'll come back to that later.
It's not so important.
The main problem with their instruction on setting the IP for your switch, is that nowhere
do they tell you to reserve that IP address in your router.
You see what could happen, is if you turn off your game console and therefore that local
IP isn't in use for a while, your router may just assign that IP address to another device.
But now you'd have some random device, which might be a computer, a printer, a security
camera, whatever, that now has the IP address that you just forwarded all the ports to.
Which is a massive security risk.
Many devices like the ones I mentioned, or also smart devices, may have a web interface
that lets you control it like through a web browser.
But a lot of times, these will have a default, publicly known login, like a default password.
And if someone tries probing your IP address, they'll see, "oh, on this port, there's this
web interface for this random device.
Hmm, oh, it's this camera?
Let me look up the default login for that camera."
And very few people bother changing the password, so now it's very possible someone randomly
on the internet can access a device and control it within your home.
In that situation, best case scenario, it's an innocuous device like a robot vacuum that
isn't really important, and also it doesn't have any vulnerabilities that can be used
to infect it and then infect the rest of the network.
Worst case scenario, it's something important, like a security camera.
Or even if it is something dumb, like a smart fridge or a device you did even change the
password on, they might still have an exploit that lets a hacker access it, or potentially
install malicious software onto it and act like a permanent Trojan horse in your network
doing god-knows-what.
And there are already plenty of other stories about how millions of IoT devices, "Internet
of Things", are vulnerable from some exploit, one or another.
And while Nintendo does at least tell you to forward only UDP traffic, not TCP, it's
still a huge risk.
Though I will point out that this advice they gave is not new.
Web archives show that they were giving the same advice as far back as 2015.
And back then, they even said to forward not just UDP, but also TCP.
[Bruh Sound Effect #2] Oh my god.
At least they did change that.
Oh, and on top of all of this, even if you don't get hacked, if you have any other devices
on your network that rely on UPnP, Universal Plug and Play, the port forwarding settings
will probably override that and completely mess up the connection for that device that
relies on that feature.
Now universal plug and play is not actually that important.
In fact, I recommend disabling it in your router settings if you don't need it.
And I talked about that in another video, but still.
Alright, now before I did mention the dumb instructions Nintendo has for setting a static
IP on your Switch console, and I just have to go over it because it's hilarious.
Basically they say to first go to your computer and get some info about your network there,
like what format your network uses for local IPs.
Fair enough.
Then they say to look at the local IP for that computer and... add 20 to the last number?
And use that as the IP for your Switch.
And if that doesn't work, try 30, 40, and so on.
What they're trying to do here is effectively get you to pick a random IP address that hopefully
is not already in use.
But this method is so stupid.
Since usually the max number is going to be 255, they could literally just say, pick a
random number between 2 and 255, because 1 is usually used by the router.
And if that number doesn't work, just pick another random one.
Instead they use this dumb system that has the illusion of being systematic, but if your
computer's IP, that you're looking at as an example, has an IP that's pretty high up,
like 250, if you add 20, 30, or 40 to it, none of those are going to work, because they're
all going to be outside the maximum range.
So their advice has a chance of just straight-up not working, and someone who doesn't know
any better might think it's important to add specifically 20, 30, or 40, and just never
be able to figure out why it's not working.
So overall I find it just unfathomable that a massive, well known game company like Nintendo
is so bad at computers.
Needless to say, I personally would not follow their advice, and instead try to look up which
specific ports you would need to forward for whatever particular game you're looking for.
Though apparently some Nintendo games may actually randomize the ports they use, which
could actually mean you really would need to forward all the ports, though I couldn't
verify that.
But in any case, at least ensure that you go and figure out how to reserve the IP address
for your console in your router settings.
Usually this will be under something called DHCP, that's how the router assigns IP addresses.
It might be called assigning IP addresses, static IP, something like that, but it'll
be around the settings talking about DHCP.
Or if your router can't do that for some reason, then you should probably keep the port forwarding
disabled unless you're actually playing the game right then and there, and then when you're
done playing the game for the day, disable that port forwarding again.
And if you're done playing that game for good, then obviously remember to disable that port
forwarding regardless.
So hopefully you learned something today, and also were entertained by Nintendo's insanity.
If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up, let me know down in the comments what
you think.
Also maybe consider checking out the rest of my channel, some recent videos.
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If you want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is that one I mentioned talking
about five router settings that you should probably change, so I'll put that link right
there.
Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.