Man, thank you so much for your kindness in responding with so much detail. Will check out the link you posted to see if I can figure this out. I am however trying to setup a "hallmarked node" in order to earn some coins so it is sounding like I do need to setup port forwarding. Not being real knowledgeable with networking stuff, I am not even sure what the difference is between opening a port, forwarding a port or port triggering. Actually never heard of port triggering until last night trying to set this up on my router:-)
Thanks again to all that have replied......a most welcoming community!
Important to note that you also need a static external IP address. If you don't, you may never receive a payout as the hallmark is tied to your IP, and has to be detected for over 24 hours straight to be eligible for one. You can rent DigitalOcean droplets for $5 a month that it will run fine on, and they're currently paying a little over that per node at this price I think.
Opening a port is opening it on your router
Forwarding a port is forwarding an open port on your router to your desktop
Triggering a port is something wholly more complex and my advice is to ignore it if you don't fancy jumping down the networking rabbit hole ;-)
Is there a Rich List and/or a block explorer available?
I'm kind of interested to see where I rank.
New ANN looks great by the way!
Everything you need can be found here Crypto-in-tha-blood:
http://explorer.nhzcrypto.org/Check the accounts page for the rich list.