URL mapping is good if you don't want your connection blocked, while port forwarding is good if you need non-HTTP services.
- Port forwarding is a facility for making any TCP or UDP network service available outside the TeamForge Lab Management environment. Host URL mapping only allows you to expose HTTP-based services.
- A major limitation of port forwarding is that many organizations' firewall security policies prohibit outgoing connections to arbitrary high ports. Because URL mappings all use standard HTTP/HTTPS ports 80 and 443, they will never be blocked. If you can access TeamForge Lab Management itelf, you will be able to access any application configured with host URL mapping.
- Host URL mapping can automatically add SSL encryption to your web services that are not running SSL encryption. With port forwarding, if you want SSL encryption, you must set it up on each host.
- Using host URL mapping, you can expose only a part of a server's URL space. With port forwarding, the entire URL space is visible.
- Port forwarding does not need to rewrite links inside the HTML, so more web applications will work under port forwarding.
