Posted by Fubster My torrents were never fully connected and remained in "yellow" all the time. I use Azureus, so I did the router/firewall check. It failed, so I disable my router's firewall, and now it works.

That's crazy (from a security point of view). All you have to do is forward one port, and then that port is passed to your computer instead of being blocked, you should *never* have to shut off important security features on the router...

...or a range of ports. I think there is one main one bittorrent uses, but it also can use some others - I have like 8 or so being forwarded for it on my box.

Bit torrent clients usually use port 6881.

Posted by Beryl That's crazy (from a security point of view). All you have to do is forward one port, and then that port is passed to your computer instead of being blocked, you should *never* have to shut off important security features on the router...

You'd think so, but even with a wide range of ports forwarded, it didn't work. After disabling the firewall, it works.

Plus, if you have a firewall on your computer, it shouldn't really affect your security in any serious way.

Azureus, the client specified, uses one port.

Posted by Fubster Plus, if you have a firewall on your computer, it shouldn't really affect your security in any serious way.

After a bit of thinking, I'm more wondering how you "shut off the firewall" since I can't imagine a normal end-user firewall having a simple option to forward all ports to one computer or whatever else it would have to do to the NAT.

Maybe you meant you shut off stateful inspection? That *might* (but is extremely unlikely) have caused issues for you; but it should be impossible to turn off it's firewall capability directly (even without SPI, it's still a NAT firewall).

I think we've been talking about different things by accident .

But also note that, no, personal firewalls can't be properly trusted:
1) They typically boot up after your network interface so you are unprotected at startup and shutdown...
2) They can have simple overflow flaws where they can be tricked into letting malicious data enter...
3) If they crash you're screwed...
4) They run UNDER the OS. That means the OS has control. If "find files or folders" search wants to report back to MS what you're searching for on your hard disk (as it does in XP), for a quick and shitty example, it can.

Posted by Beryl After a bit of thinking, I'm more wondering how you "shut off the firewall" since I can't imagine a normal end-user firewall having a simple option to forward all ports to one computer or whatever else it would have to do to the NAT.

Setting the computers IP to be a DMZ.

I'm not talking about DMZ, I'm talking about the actual firewall. Under a WRT54G router, you can simply shut it off.

As I really don't have anything sensitive on my home network, I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought setting a computer in a DMZ in effect disabled the firewall for that computer, because it opened all the outside ports directly to that computer.

Well, it seems that even with firewall active, the torrents are working. This is strange, but whatever. It works.

So don't disable your firewall, it seems it was just a miraculous coincidence.

They should work fine with a firewall in place in most cases, just that opening the ports should speed them up. Mine worked fine when it was firewalled.

Mine never worked until I disabled the firewall. After turning the firewall back on, it still works.

Why this is I have no idea...

Just a note about DMZ. DMZ is nice because you don't have to enable port forwarding but it is also inheriantly very risky for the computer that is sitting in the DMZ, it's almost like a computer having a wide open public IP address. The only reason I can think of to use DMZ is if you have a lot of services on that computer, more then the number of ports that can be forwarded. I also find it very odd that a firewall would have any bearing at all for you and BitTorrent. I download torrents quite often and with full firewall and no ports being forwarded in that range to my computer, I've never had a problem of any kind with speed. I've had this experience both the Linksys WRT54G and the Microshaft MN-500.

Ok, I have come to the conclusion that Bittorrent is on crack.

I'm getting a NAT error again, even with all firewalls disabled and my computer in a DMZ.


Edit: Ok, I fixed it. But it was the stupidiest thing ever. I have my bittorrent port set to 65435. Before, I on;y had that port forwarded. When I relized that it uses more ports, I opened up a range of ports. Something wide, like 65400-65500. Next thing I know, I'm getting a NAT error. After trying everything to fix it, I change the port range to 65435-65500. Now it works. What the fuck...

Ahhh, I finally got around to doing the port forwarding thing, it's a lot faster now! and the little smileys turned green like they said it would. Only thing, they don't always have the newer router firmware guides on that site for the said router, so you have to play around a little bit. Thanks Stealthy!

Posted by Magical Trevor Ahhh, I finally got around to doing the port forwarding thing, it's a lot faster now! and the little smileys turned green like they said it would. Only thing, they don't always have the newer router firmware guides on that site for the said router, so you have to play around a little bit. Thanks Stealthy!

Hey, anytime

Disabling the firewall is not necessary.

On your firewall, forward ports 6881 to 6999 to your internal workstation that is running BitTorrent. This will allow outside hosts to connect in to your workstation (to get/send data), otherwise every session will have to be initiated by your workstation (which works but results in slower downloads).

For more information see:
http://btfaq.com/serve/cache/25.html

Posted by lowkey Disabling the firewall is not necessary. On your firewall, forward ports 6881 to 6999 to your internal workstation that is running BitTorrent. This will allow outside hosts to connect in to your workstation (to get/send data), otherwise every session will have to be initiated by your workstation (which works but results in slower downloads). For more information see: http://btfaq.com/serve/cache/25.html

That's a really cool suggestion, I'm going to have to try that on my own box.

Posted by Kenshin That's a really cool suggestion

It would be if it wasn't already stated by stealthy on the first page... And since many ISPs throttle known p2p ports, it's not too bright to use the default port.

Solution? Get Azureus, it's the best client by far, and it only uses one port no matter how much stuff you're leeching or seeding. Set the port in Azureus to something high like 16881 (see stealthy's link on how and why to do so - simply put it lets you connect to a lot more people) and then forward the port on your router.

Posted by Beryl It would be if it wasn't already stated by stealthy on the first page....

stealthy posted about forwarding ports to Azureus and provided a link to back that up.

I provided the ports that bittorrent uses by default and a link that provided instructions on how to forward the ports on Windows ICS firewall, ZoneAlarm, the Mac OS X firewall and GNU/Linux IpTables.

Other than the fact that both steathly and I mentioned port forwarding, there isn't that much in common between the two posts.

Please read what I post and link to before you dismiss it as already said.

Posted by lowkey Please read what I post and link to before you dismiss it as already said.

I replied to "that is a good idea" (as quoted in my reply), the idea being that of Port Forwarding. Since that was already mentioned, I noted that to give credit where it was also due.