Router Problem

[Ricey]

Hey guys,

I have a little router problem I hope you can help me with. See, I got a router a few weeks ago and just set it up today. Thing is, Im a member of a wrestling torrents site (pwtorrents.net) and my routers causing havoc. PWT is telling me I am unconnectable...this hasn't happened before so I'm certain its to do with the router. So I have two questions. Firstly, is there any way to fix this? Secondly, and this would be better, is it possible to tell my router to accept all traffic? I mean, I have a software firewall so this shouldn't be a security problem should it?

I'm using

Windows XP SP2
SB4200 Surfboard cable modem
Netgear WGR614


Please guys, ANY help would be appreciated,
Ricey

[lynx]

If you really want to direct all non-specific traffic to your pc you need to set up a DMZ. This is done in the Wan Setup area of your router configuration. See page 6-7 of the manual on how to do this.

However, some trackers won't allow you to use the default bittorrent ports. If that's the case a DMZ won't help you, you should change the ports your bittorrent client uses, and the corresponding port forwarding in your router.

If your client supports UPnP you could enable that in your router (manual page 6-18), in XP and in your client. That way you can set your client to use random ports (helps prevent your ISP from blocking p2p) without having to manually change your port forwarding each time.

[JPaul]

The question is, do you want to set up a DMZ at all. Part of the beauty of a NAT router is that it does not accept unsolicited traffic, it just ignores it. Therefore you are effectively invisible to anyone looking for IP adresses they can hi-jack. This is considered (I'm sure lynx will agree) safer than software rejecting it, as that only confirms you are there.

I use bittornado, which I believe uses random ports (in the range 10000 to 60000.) rather than specific ones.

As lynx says, you need to access the router and forward the ports being used by you BT client to the appropriate machine. It is also worth checking if you have 2 firewalls operating. i.e. if you have XP's own firewall switched on, in addition to another one. In my experience that can cause problems and it is better to switch one off.

Good luck getting it sorted.

[lynx]

Yes, I agree almost completely.

With DMZ the router will simply pass the attempted access through, it won't respond itself, so unless the software firewall allows responses to unsolicited accesses it won't make any difference to visibility.

However, there's one area I forgot to mention where there will be a difference with DMZ. The unsolicited accesses will still be passed through the router to your internal lan, and that can add quite a lot of traffic. In turn, that can slow down both your lan and your router, so from that angle too DMZ is a poor solution.

Just as an example of what can happen, my router doesn't support UPnP and I had my utorrent client set to use random ports. In order to get that to work I was running with a DMZ for a few days. In the first 2 days alone my firewall blocked just short of 200,000 access attempts. I certainly noticed a drop in performance.

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

I would turn off the software firewall, and forward the appropriate port to your BT client from within the router. Your internal IP is prolly 192.168.1.100, so you will forward the port you use to that address. It really is THAT simple. Your router will act as a firewall, so there shouldnt be any need for the software firewall, unless you are one of those people who think "more is better" or if you like clicking all the pop ups to let everything in and out of the PC lol