[Jskibum]

To find your local IP address with ME or Win98, type winipcfg in the run dialog box. That will show your local IP, will be in the format of 192.168.1.xx, it is this address to which the ports should be forwarded for torrents to work right. If you have a hardware router/firewall, which , IMHO (I'm a computer tech by trade FWIW), then you typically go to the port forwarding page in the router setup and add the range of 6881-6999 to be forwarded to the IP address that you came up with in the winipcfg lookup.

The caveat in this set up is that you need to give your computer a permanent, ie static, ip address if you have more than one PC on a network and DHCP turned on in the router settings. If you ALWAYS turn on PC #1 first, chances are good that you will get the first available IP address from the IP pool, ie. 192.168.1.100 (if that is your starting number in the DHCP range, could be anything, this is just an example) and the above advice will still work. If you have more than one PC on your network, then you should set up, minimally, your bit torrenting PC with a permanent local IP.

Go to the Properties for your local network, highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the properties button for that and in the next dialog you can see two options: obtain an IP address automatically or use the following IP address. Check use the following IP adress. Now you make up your IP address: 192.168.1.XXX (XXX can equal anything from 1-255, usually your router uses 1 so ignore that option, lol, pick anything 10 or higher to insure peace of mind). Subnet mask is generally 255.255.255.0. Default gateway value HAS to be the router address, typically it is assigned 192.168.1.1 (with Linksys, others use 192.168.0.1 or other variation) but your user manual will always tell you what the address is. No manual, go online and find out.

After you get these values set up, you may need to reboot, depending on your OS, I think ME will make you do it, and then you can go back into you router settings>port forwarding page and enter that newly minted IP address into the port forwarding address area. At this point you should be good to go!

ME doesn't have any internal firewall to obfuscate connectivity, so that can be a good thing. If you have broadband, you must if you are downloading and sharing torrents, do yourselves a favor and ditch the software firewalls, spend the 35 dollars and get a hardware device. Much more reliable, way easier to configure, can network multiple PCS. And after you get that going, you might try Zone Alarm out so that you ferret out those nasty Spyware things which try to send out info from your PC without your implicit permissions.

Hope this helps.