Azureus port...open or closed?

[Two|Bit]

I recently encrypted my azuereus so that my ISP won't reduce its speed. I don't know if this is because of that, but azureus is asking me to open a port on my router. Should I do it? The downloads are still working fine... will this speed them up in anyway? I forget why it said to open them, for like De-something or other. thanks

[Mesaeus]

It's probably for the Distributed Database. It's a new function of Bittorrent that allows you to automatically cooperate with other Azureus users when the tracker is down or unreachable. In effect, it makes sure you can continue to download from the other Azureus users that are downloading that particular torrent when the main route to finding other seeds (the tracker) doesn't work anymore.

To enable it, make sure you open the same port listed under "Incoming TCP/UDP listen port" in the "Connection" part of the configuration screen. You have to open it for UDP, TCP is used for the main Azureus workings. If you don't do all this, you simply will not be able to download/find other sources when the tracker's down.

Edit : I almost forget since it's a bit obvious, but you also have to open the same port for TCP traffic, otherwise you'll only get a part of the possible connections/sources, and that will definitely slow everything down.

[Two|Bit]

http://www.portforward.com/english/r...me/Azureus.htm I followed this guide exactly, and now im getting the green smilies in Azureus. it had to do with setting up a static IP address and than setting the port on your router to be open... However at the end, it said i had to do this to every computer on my netword... is this true? Or is he just talking about to get the functionality of the static ip?

"Remember that all of the computers on your network need to be setup like this, and every one of them needs to have a different ip address!!!!"

I scanned my ports with ShieldsUP and it said that the port was open... which doesn't surprise me, but is that a bad thing? Can i get haxorzed?!

[Mesaeus]

What you did was port forwarding. And yes that was what you're supposed to do. It works like this : when the router gets an unsollicited packet for bittorrent (or any other server application you want to use), it cannot know which of the connected pc's it was meant for, if there's even one. One solution to solve this is to simply tell the router that everything coming in on one specific port has to be forwarded to one specific connected pc. Now this can only be done if the internal ip address of that pc remains the same, otherwise you'd have to update this forwarding rule each time your pc changes internal address. That's what they mean with setting up a static ip address instead of dynamic (DHCP).

However at the end, it said i had to do this to every computer on my netword... is this true? Or is he just talking about to get the functionality of the static ip?

He was probably talking about static ip's, though even there that is not really true. No the real problem with port forwarding is that if another pc also wants to use Azureus, it has to get a different port from the one you're already using and get a forwarding rule made for that too. Some server functions (like an email server) expect to run on a specific port like 21 and that makes it hard to have email servers on more than one pc.

Relax, you did ok. But check if you're forwarding both TCP and UDP for that port for full access.

And no you cannot be haxxored unless there's some huge flaw in the receiving mechanism of the program, and since Azureus is an open source project, the developers tend to leave that sort of huge whoppers to the "professionals" of Microsoft

[Two|Bit]

Ok thanks alot. But i did have to change the IPs of all of the computers on the network...none of them could connect otherwise, and some of them are Macs, so i got a bit scured when things didn't work the first time, but everything has been resolved.

But check if you're forwarding both TCP and UDP for that port for full access.

What exactly do you mean by this? Thanks again

[Mesaeus]

When you were setting up port forwarding, you had to give the router the number of the port you wanted to open. UDP and TCP are two protocols that can be used on the same port, so make sure they're both included in the rule. Lots of routers let you choose between "TCP", "UDP" or "TCP and UDP". With others you just have to make two rules, one for TCP and one for UDP. Are all three circles green in Azureus ? If so, everything's set up fine.

[Two|Bit]

http://kevinspencer123.googlepages.com/home Some screen shots of settings... I don't know how i could change it in my router settings