Thread: uTorrent, routers, and port forwarding.

  1. #1
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    uTorrent, routers, and port forwarding.

    So, I finally got high(er)-speed internet! Ok it's not blazingly fast. 512kb down, 128kb up. It's still better than dial-up. Anyway, we got it through Xplornet, which is a satellite internet provider.

    One of the first things I went for was a bittorrent client. Unfortunatly, routers don't seem to like P2P, as all my download speeds are that of dial-up (1-4kb/s), where HTTP and FTP downloads are all around 40-50kb/s.

    I'm using uTorrent 1.6, and I have a Dlink, DI-604 router. I've read that I should try port forwarding, but AFAIK, I need a static IP address, which I don't believe Xplornet supports ("ipconfig /all" just gives me 192.168.0.1 for a DNS address).

    The uTorrent port forwarding test says OK, but i'm still getting a yellow exlamation mark thing in the status bar.

    I've made sure uTorrent is an exception in the SP2 firewall.

    There's a filter page in my routers firewall options, where BitTorrent and Azureus are set. I didn't set them, and I don't really know exactly how to go about adding programs to that filter. However, I still had the same issues with those clients, so I don't know if it would help.

    Anyway, the basic question here, is how to speed up uTorrent (or any client really), without using a static IP (or if i'm misunderstanding what static IP their talking about).

    Thanks!
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    Yes, my avatar is stolen anonytmouse's Avatar
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    The private IP address of your computer needs to be static, not your public internet address. This is so that the router can forward connections to the correct computer (which it couldn't do if it didn't have a static address). This is easy to set up and doesn't require ISP support. If you have only one computer connected to the router, its address will probably be effectively static anyway.

    Here is a tutorial for setting up port forwarding with the DI-604 and uTorrent (includes info on setting up static IP).

    Some ISPs restrict file sharing traffic so you are not guaranteed higher speeds.

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    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    I tried port forwarding, as well as enabling DMZ for my computer, and still nothing.

    However from looking around on different forums, it seems that Xplornet does limit P2P traffic, as everyone with Xplornet has had trouble with torrents. I think they turn off the bandwidth restriction sometime in the middle of the night though (or at least that's what I think I read). Seems likely, since downloads I leave overnight are done by the time i'm up, even though it was reported to have about 1.5 days left when I left the computer. I think i'll stay up later tonight and find out for sure.
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
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    More than likely they're limiting all port access to keep control of viruses. I know a of a lot of providers that do that(the one at home will actually stop all interenet access for 30 minutes if I try to use torrents or play a game online like Call of Duty 2).
    You could try calling your provider and asking them to unlock your ports. Just tell them you're coding an instant messenger similar to IRC, and you need to have full access in order to debug it properly(that's what I told them at school, and now I have my ports flagged to not be shut off if they detect lots of traffic).

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    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
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    Usually they don't care, why you want the ports to be open. They'll just open it if you want them to.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

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    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    I did some more research, and Xplornet doesn't block the ports, but they do openly admit to restricting P2P activity. I can also confirm that this restriction is lifted sometime after midnight.

    I also read somewhere that having a static public IP address helps, but Xplornet doesn't offer static public IPs over the statellite Ka-band service.

    I did find a service called No-IP which sets a URL to a dynamic address, basically creating a static address. Would this work? Is it safe?
    Last edited by psychopath; 09-24-2006 at 02:20 PM.
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    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
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    No-IP and DynDNS are both good solutions.
    My router has a built-in DynDNS and No-IP support so I don't have to download any extra programs or mess with them very much.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

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