I read that you can configure a router with a stealth port option (or run an app on router/firewall maybe?) so that other servers/bots can't detect what ports you have open... Is this true and if so how can I do this? I'm willing to spend some money if I need to. Thx.
I think you are confused. Default router config normally do not have any port forwarding anyway. Do you have any ports open? Do you want to have any ports open?
yes I have a few ports open - yes i want them open No i don't want anyone to be able to ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxx and see that I have a port open. I'm not confused, I opened up a few ports, I'm not running standard ports but I still don't want anyone to know that they are open if I'm pinged - any way to have them not show up? http://www.canyouseeme.org/ - I don't want my open ports to come up on places like this. Thx.
The canonical method is via port knocking: http://www.portknocking.org/ Check the implementations page, there's a lot of them in varying states of usability and support.
The Hotbrick hardware firewall I have does not default to stealth, it has to be set to not respond to pings... the typical hardware firewall you would get from Best Buy defaults to stealth though... gre.com has some tests to tell you what your setup looks like from the internet side...