Bit torrent / Firewall / ports question

[Lucifers_Ghost]

Hello yet again everyone,

I use bit torrent sometimes to download different things. Usually apps.

Normally my download times are pretty good. On a 3meg cable, my downstream is regularly around 45k/s on very often 3 or 4 different downloads.

I recently installed Zone Alarm and now, the downloads are very slow (around 5 - 8k/s) and the downloads get disconnected frequently.

Are there any ports or settings I should change to alleviate this problem?

Thanks in advance.

LG

[4smiley20]

Bit torrent uses port 6881-6889 by default. If you use a client such as bit tornado you can control what ports are used as well as a few other things. When you start a torrent zonealarm should be asking you for permission to have bit torrent act as a server. If its doing this then it should open up the ports needed and you should have no problem.

If you are using version 50.590.015 of zonealarm that is where your problem is for sure. I upgraded to that version and it would cut off my downloads all the time. I would have to restart them whenever I noticed they had stopped. It was weird because I would still be connected to the tracker and peers but my download and upload speed would sit at zero. That version of zonealarm is absolute crap. If thats the case just shutting off zonealarm won't fix the problem. I had to completely uninstall mine inorder to get bit torrent to work properly, but you may just have to kill the processes if any are running after shutting down zonealarm.

I had a similar problem when I first installed my router, but all I had to do was forward the ports I used to fix that. My advice would be to see if you are running that version of zonealarm, I believe its the latest release. If you are I would suggest rolling back or using a different software firewall.

[Lucifers_Ghost]

I think it is the new version. I just downloaded it from the site .. erm .. last week.

I will try to find an older version.

Any recommdations on a particular version? Or should I go with Norton security? Or something else?

[4smiley20]

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=223175

this might be able to give you a little more insight.

[Faustus]

First off its a good idea to not use the standard BT ports, as alot of ISPs are blocking them and therefore a few BT sites not require non standard ports. So I'd change the ports to something oddball for further use.

Also I've had far better luck using BT with an actual Hardware firewall, even the one built into my D-Link router is works great, you just load up its web interface and make sure I sends all data to your oddball port straight to the machine you BT from using your Network Cards MAC addresss.

Its easier then it sounds, and it works great with no performance hit, never trusted software firewalls myself...

Unreformable Azureus user myself, since you can use the same program on Mac, Windows, or Linux, and the options rule.

[mike1061]

I have a belkin router, and need to same info. How to pass ports 6881-6999. I can acess the belkin web page, but I just can't seem to figure out what to type to do this.
Thanks Mike