How to Open Ports in ZoneAlarm Pro

ZoneAlarm is an application developed to protect your computer from hackers. It acts as a doorkeeper of sorts, only allowing in Internet traffic that you want. It is especially active when you are away from your PC, and can even be set up to automatically activate after a specified period of inactivity. ZoneAlarm Pro is especially useful if you use a firewall on your PC.

Firewalls are a necessary utility when you connect to the Internet because they prevent people from accessing your information through your Internet connection. However, firewalls may cause certain programs from working properly, especially those that require an Internet connection.

Say, for example, you want to host a game server - you would not be able to invite clients unless your firewall is properly configured. A firewall may prevent outside users from connecting to your server by blocking all incoming traffic to your computer. To remedy this, you need to open specific Internet ports so that the program can access your Internet connection. You can open these ports by using a firewall program, called Zone Alarm.

You can specify specific ports to be opened for each particular program. This would be the most secure method of opening ports with Zone Alarm because only specified programs will be allowed to access you system. The program you will most likely use this for is a BitTorrent client.

BitTorrent clients need access to your computer through your computer so that you can download files from file-sharing networks. Let us use the file-sharing program uTorrent, as the example.

*You will first need to determine what port you need to forward to your computer. You can do this by using uTorrent's Preferences window.
Open the preferences window in uTorrent and click Connection. Write down the port shown in the Connection screen. This will be under the field labeled Port used for incoming connections.

Uncheck the checkbox for randomizing ports. You now know the port used by uTorrent to access your computer. You can use this for other programs as well.
You just need to know the incoming port being used by the program and you're good to go.

Now open Zone Alarm by double-clicking the Zone Alarm icon found on the desktop. When Zone Alarm opens, click the Program Control button on the navigation bar to the left. Once the Program Control screen opens, click the Programs tab. You should see a list of all your installed programs. Select the desired program and click Options. Click on the Expert Rules tab.

Now you need to click the Add button to start adding ports. In the Name field, enter the name of the rule (e.g. uTorrent). Type in what the rule is going to do under the Comments field.

Now, click the Modify button and select Add Protocol. Enter the specific ports you want to allow access to your Internet connection. Select the protocol type. For uTorrent, we will use TCP.

Enter a description just like you did with Comments under the Description field. Select Other under the Destination Port section and enter ports you want to allow. This is where you need to enter the number you copied down earlier. Press OK when you are complete. Click Apply on the Expert Rules page and click OK.

You can now close Zone Alarm because the ports you have specified will now be open to your specified program.