Port forwarding with Belkin router?

[granny]

Hiya,

Having some trouble with my belkin 4-port cable/dsl router. I'm trying to set up port-forwarding for BitTorrent with it and I cannot work out how to do it. The manual is utterly uninformative as is Belkin's website.

Router configuration is web-based on 192.168.2.1 and I think the section I want is called "Virtual Server" but it makes no sense. I've attached a screeny of it - any ideas what I enter where to forward ports 6881-6889?

Thanks

[Xavier]

firstly the way to get the maximum bandwidth from bittorrent is to run 1-2 torrents max, so you'll only need to forward 6881, 6882, 6883 at maximum...

Just put your machine IP in the private IP column, then 6881 in the second and third, repeat rows two and three with 6882, 6883 respectively, and you should be sorted. Remember bittorrent traffic is TCP only.

Xav

[granny]

Aha, cheers Xav.

Will give it a try when my NTL connection works again (no service since Sunday morning, pld NTL).

[babs]

I do it a little differently so here's my tuppence worth I use the Azureus client which allows you to limit both the upload rate and the maximum number of outgoing connections (to minimize choking). As far as the ports go though, I've found my speeds have increased since I was forwarding just 6881, and now I use the whole range of 6881-6889. A quick check on the network traffic shows I'm getting more incoming connections and that all the ports are now being used. Thus far I've had no detrimental side-effects.

[jeddiespaghetti]

on azureus, do you still get the yellow smiley face even after you added the ports and enabled the NAT?
or do you get the good green smileys?

[babs]

Depends on how good the seeds are, but green normally.

[granny]

I'm mostly getting greens too now that I've opened up the ports. I use the BitTornado client, seems good, can set up/down rates and number of connections for each individual torrent. Still bloody slow usually simply because there's always 100x as many downloaders as seeds but then that's the limiting factor with all p2p now isn't it?

[babs]

Well, seeds aren't everything, seeds are just those with full versions of what your are downloading. Anybody else downloading is a potential download source for you providing they have parts you don't. Make sure you throttle your upload connections though, or your downloads can suffer greatly. I allow no more than 3 uploads per torrent and throttle at 15k, and I still hit top speeds on a 1mbit connection. Some people say I'm generous with that setup too.

[granny]

Ah... this could be where I'm going wrong then, I'm set up for 6 uploads per torrent and total max upstream bandwidth at 20k on a 600k connection. Thinking about it I'm probably flooding the upstream and thus killing the downloads, doh!

[Clown]

I have 20k upload on a 256k upload connection. That shouldn't be the reason, because I can share and download LEGAL FILES very well.

Maybe the tracker you're on is crap. Maybe your peers are being stingy. There are a few other things that may mash your download speed.

[babs]

I get better speeds on legal files also, but it tends to affect them more when there's a larger number of peers.

[jeddiespaghetti]

the reason why i still had that "yellow" health was because i had my firewall enabled. when i disabled it, the health turned green and my dl's went a lot faster.