the forums at degreez.net

It is quite clear where the problem arose: When, four days ago, I installed McAfee Firewall (as well as antivirus soft). I haven't regretted that decision at all, since my comp was getting flooded with unwanted intrusions.

...Yet, you know the dark side of this.

With no additional changes, simply the firewall is my problem - yet I wouldn't dare turning it off.

The only options are a) "forwarding" appropriate ports (something I haven't apparently completely succeeded in), or b) simply finding some more flexible firewall software where getting "green" status would be a piece-of-cake.

Here's some facts:
1MB adsl connection, with which quite usually and easily I've got speeds up to 80+ kbps DL in the last few months - Now, with the firewall, there's a lot of problems: The total speed rarely exceeds 40-50 kbps (half the potential)... Upload is almost constantly twice to three times the download speed (ratio is reversed from the usual then).

But that's pretty much what usually happens, right?
What's more interesting is what I've done so far:

Using ports 6881-6999, bittornado works mostly sluggishly.

I did something to "match" the ports and to try and open up the traffic, yet nothing apparently changed even after...
a) I granted "full access" to btdownloadgui.exe when first inquired by McAfee.
b) I fiddled with the settings to the best of my knowledge. I got to a portion of the Utilities section titled "System Services - Expose Service Ports To The Outside World."

Therein I chose "ADD (port configuration)."
I EDIT the "service" with the following info:

Program Name: btdownloadgui.exe
Incoming TCP/IP ports: 6881-6999
Outgoing TCP/IP ports: 6881-6999
[I left the following empty:]
Incoming UDP ports: -
Outgoing UDP ports: -

Then I ticked the "service" to apparently activate it.

Well...
I don't know if something actually changed or not.
But one thing's certain - even after rebooting the system, bittornado never flashes green...



I've been doing "Manual Announce" frequently, since this seems to boost my changes of connecting to people... But I need to have hordes of peers to connect to anyone... If I open two or three torrents side-by-side, the whole thing sometimes collapses - everything subsides to 2-4kpbs (!).

Seems like not all's as it should be, or as it could be.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

What does www.grc.com 's "Shields Up!" say when you scan the port range "6881-6889" while you are doing a bittorrent download. Does it at least show one port open or is that range entirely stealth while you are doing a bittorrent download?

Oh, here's some data:

Stealth analysis says for the range of 6881-6999:
All stealth, except 6881, which seems to be "open"...

When I ask about 6881 specifically, it says
"Solicited TCP Packets: RECEIVED (FAILED);
Unsolicited Packets: PASSED;
Ping Echo: PASSED"

Do these other denominators matter? (Ping specifically?)

I'm not sure exactly what the status is compared to pre-firewall...

It says it's "listening to port 6881" when either torrentstorm or bittornado is on. The rest of the ips (peers and seeds) have an arrow pointing to the left (signifying the direction of the communication?) at various ports (6881, 6882, 6884, 6886), yet now, after doing the GRC test, there popped up an arrow to the right at port 48247 pointing towards the ip of the GRC site.

At any rate, having left the computer on for the overnight, it's again struggled to keep up connections. If I put two DL's together, almost certainly one or both of them will drop to zero or near-zero transfer-rate.

And both BitTornado and Torrenstorm have failed to turn green over a period of a dozen hours. Currently it's approximately 10kpbs.

The annoying part is uncertainty, I can't be sure what's going on.

Seems like "open" doesn't mean "open" anymore...

http://forums.degreez.net/viewtopic.php?t=280 might help then. After using the site referred to in that post, does the light turn green in your client?

Oh, indeed!
Thanks.

I tried this before, but this time it "passed" and the light turned green.
Hmm.

Ok...
So what's going on?

Why won't it give green status automatically then?
Why won't anyone apparently connect to that port?

I'm confused.