You don't need to forward ports unless you are hosting the servers yourself. On most routers, forwarding the ports used by CTRA servers will guarantee that you won't be able to connect to them, because you'll create loopback problems.
Connecting to LFS servers should be just as easy as viewing webpages. I think the problem you're having is different from something that can be fixed by port forwarding. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I really think it's not this.