Are your downloads always slow? Don't connect to many peers/seeds? Have a router? You need to forward your ports!


What is Port Forwarding?

There are a couple of concepts you need to know before you can understand port forwarding:

• Every computer on the internet has at least one ip address. The IP address is a number that is used to identify a device.
• Every IP address is divided up into many ports. When one computer sends data to another computer, it sends it from a port on an ip address to a port on an ip address.
• A port can only be used by one program at a time.

Now that we've got those general concepts out of the way let's talk about NAT. NAT is an acronym for Network Address Translation. NAT takes care of most of the work for us, but there are some programs that NAT was not designed to work with, such as P2P programs. These are the programs we need to set up port forwarding for.

Port forwarding is basically telling your router what port on your computer to send the data it receives to.

How to forward your ports

1. In your BitTorrent Client, go into the options, and look for the Incoming Listen Port. In Azureus it is in NAT/Firewall Test. Change this port to something >15000.
2. Go to http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm and look up your router. Then follow the guide to set it up for your BitTorrent client, using the same port number you just used (in step #1). If you can't find your router model on the website, choose a similar model because the setup is generally the same.
3. When you have finished that you should have successfully forwarded your ports!
4. IF you have NOT seen any changes in speeds or any effect because of port forwarding, then you can try and set a static IP for your PC.

Allowing ports through Windows Firewall

If you have Windows Firewall (in Windows XP Service Pack 2) turned on you will also need to allow the ports. If you have a different firewall go to the program's website for more instructions.

1. Open the windows control pannel (click on start --> settings ---> control panel)
2. Double click Windows Firewall icon
3. Make sure windows firewall is ON and the "don't allow exceptions" is NOT checked.
4. Click the exceptions tab

If your bit torrent client is not listed as an exception:

1. Click add program
2. Browse for the .exe of the client you use
3. Click ok

If your bit torrent client is already listed as an exception or you have done the previous three steps:

1. Click add port
2. Under name type the number of the port
3. Under port number type the number of the port your client is listening on.
4. Click TCP
5. Click ok
6. Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 but this time click UDP (same port, different protocol)
7. Click ok
8. Click ok
9. Windows MAY ask you to restart your computer. If so your ports will not be open until you restart.

Your ports are now forwarded through windows firewall

Have Fun Downloading!