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How you can forward a port number on Ubuntu (in WSL) and have the host (Windows) listen to it so that you can connect to it from Windows 11
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Here I have assumed that you know how to run a webserver in development mode on localhost like python manage.py runserver which runs on port 8000 by default or npm run dev which runs on port 3000 or 5173 etc or php -S localhost on port 80. I also assume you know how to run these on a different port like a custom, non-default port number.
Let's say you have on your WSL (which is Ubuntu by default, so I am assuming Ubuntu 24.04 here) running django as python manage.py runserver on the default port of 8000.
Check for the IP Address on your WSL instance using ifconfig. Note down the IP address.
$ ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 112.12.14.190 netmask 255.255.240.0 broadcast 112.12.15.255
inet6 xxx::215:xxx:xxx:6423 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:23 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 3120 bytes 384154 (384.1 KB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 1708 bytes 155068 (155.0 KB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 20 bytes 2102 (2.1 KB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 20 bytes 2102 (2.1 KB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
The IP address on this Ubuntu instance at WSL is 112.12.14.190.
Now open PowerShell in administrator mode on your host (Windows 11 laptop) and enter
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=8005 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=8000 connectaddress=112.12.14.190
This would listen to your WSL’s port 8000 and forward it to your Windows 11 at port 8005.
Now if you open the browser and enter http://localhost:8005 in the Address bar then you should be able to see the Django powered website running on your WSL in your Windows’ browser.
Now, if you want to stop listening to port 8005 or / and want to use port 8005 for something else, then you can de-register listening to port 8005 by :
netsh interface portproxy delete v4tov4 listenport=8005 listenaddress=0.0.0.0
Though I have mentioned WSL as the the OS that is the ‘guest’ on Windows, it can be applied to other platforms like VMWare or VirtualBox but most of these tools have a GUI for port-forwarding. Hence I’ve specifically mentioned WSL which is a 100% terminal based on Windows 10/11.