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How to check if you need to setup port forwarding

The first thing that you will need to do is to check if your computer is connected directly to the internet or you are in a network that shares one IP address.

In windows xp/vista select start-> run and type cmd. In the black window that appears type ipconfig and hit enter. You should see your current IP address. Now go to http://whatismyip.com/ and compere the ip from the site with your ip. If it is a match, you can skip this step, because you are connected directly to the internet with no router between you and the claud.

Ok you need it – forwarding for dummies

If your ip address doesn’t match the one given by that site, that means that you share your ip address with more computers or you just have a router. If you want to achieve grater speeds when downloading torrents, you need to make sure that your torrent client is reachable from the internet (ex: the router must know about your torrent client and forward any connections made to it).

In uTorrent options->speed guide and click on test if port is forwarded properly. You should see an ok, if that is the case you are saved, just skip to the next section.

Following murphy’s laws you will see a error with a red background. That means you’re screwed… nah just that the router is to stupid to use UPnP to auto configure itself, most routers made in china sweatshops two years ago don’t support that feature.

Don’t panic – you have help setting that thing

The webpage with the error text gives you a link to portforword.com, that is a very good site. You only need to find out your router model and select it from that page. You can find that by looking under it, or on the box/manual, most of them have the brand written on them and the model on the back of the device. After selecting the model you will end up with a very nice tutorial that you can fallow blindly whiteout even knowing what the hell you’re doing.

The only problem is that portforword.com is very superficial, it doesn’t always explain that you will also need to setup a static ip in your network. Let’s get this straight, you must likely have a dhcp server, and windows just get’s an ip addres from there every time you start up your computer or the connection halts. Sometimes you get for example 192.168.1.3 other times you will get 192.168.1.55. That is very bad, because port forwarding or virtual server as it’s called on some routers needs to know the ip address of the computer that will ultimatly get the connection. If your ip keeps changing every time you restart your computer, the router will not be able to forward the connection to your new address.

Solving the problems from dynamic ip addresses

setup a static ip address

• this is done locally on your computer, and it only works if your router lets you to do that.
• Problems that may arise from this:
• if the computer is a laptop and you move it around from network to network, some of the setups may or may not work with your static IP
• same ip conflict – windows will let you know if the ip is already on the network.

Setup your dhcp server to assign you the same ip address based on your NIC MAC.

All network interface cards have an unique MAC – a six groups of two hexadecimal digits that are burned into the network card by its manufacturer. It stands for Media Access Control address. Most onboard dhcp servers from routers have an option to assign a ip to a specific mac address. Try to find that and then follow the guide from port forward.