Router trouble

[russellhodgson]

I'm totally frustrated. Someone please help! I've got a Linksys WRT 54 Version 4. I'm trying to set it to allow me to open certain ports so I'm not firewalled for this site.

Im unable to get support through linksys. What do I need to do. I'm signed in to my router. So I just need directions.

Cheers,

Russ

[shopkin]

http://portforward.com/
great place to start.....

[mrpete]

There's another thread that makes a good point or two (EG static IP likely is a good thing) at the URL below.

http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=80208

I gotta agree with shopkin ... portforward.com is a good place to start. It walks you through the process based on what router/model you have and what application you are trying to configure the ports for. One thing about portforward.com is that they have advertisements there that can be difficult to tell apart from the site content.

One point about ports is that, for you, portforward.com appears to show a low port number in use for some of the P2P clients; a port below 10000. It is best for you to choose/use a random high port above 10000. 49152 - 65535 might be slightly better. Set your P2P client to use the port you've chosen.

portforward.com appears to remain silent about router passwords. You NEVER want to go with the default router password. It is possible that the router will someday be subject to a brute force password attack [(maybe intelligently) "try them all"]. Therefore, set the router password to something STRONG. No words in the PW or anything like that (p33rn3t). That includes words from other languages. Password length should be 7 - 8 chars or longer.

Have one or more of all of the below in the PW:
- upper case letters
- special chars (~!@#$%^&*)
- numbers

It is best to randomly position those numbers/specials/caps in the PW.

An excellent strategy for making a PW is to choose a "pass phrase" and use the 1st letters of the words. For example ...

four
score
and
seven
years
ago

start PW = fsasya
next step = fsa8#SYA (maybe the number 8 is your lucky number?)


If you have port problems after going through the instructions at portforward.com then post here.