First of all, this isn't a problem I am having, I'm just curious how this works.
If you run your node with port 8333 open, you'll receive a large amount of connections after being online for a while.
If you run your node without port 8333, you still have connections, but it usually won't exceed around 7 connections.
My stupid simpleton logic tells me I should have no connections if that port isn't open, but that clearly isn't the case.
So my specific questions are:
How do I have any connections at all without using port 8333?
If it is using another port, why is the limit at 7?
The node still relays txs to peers, just less of them, so I'm assuming it is not a security issue?