NAT and DHT Firewall - What are these and why should I care?

[PBrane]

I use Azureus and regularly the thing complains about NAT problems or DHT firewall problems, but despite these the seeds seem to be working although the smiley "health" icon stays yellow. Other times it's green. I play around with the "listen" port moving from the standard 6881 to 6882 or 6883, and this seems to fix the NAT, but doesn't change the behaviour of the torrents. What's going on and do I really need to know??
P.

[gsmyth79]

NAT means port forwarding essentially. So what you need to do is open up the same port in your firewall, router and client. The older ports of 6881-6889 are not generally used anymore because many ISPs have started blocking those ports. In fact many trackers require you use a port other than 6881-6889. I used to have a link to a list of what ports are used for what but basically every port over 50,000 isn't used, so pick a high one. Plug that into your BT port in Azureus, open that port up in your firewall if you use one, and open that port up in your router. Each model is different so go to http://portforward.com/ and find out how to do it for yours. After that, restart everything and you should be good to go and have green smiley faces in Az. TTD sometimes tells you you're firewalled even though you may not be so go to http://btfaq.com/natcheck.pl and enter in the relevant info to check it.

DHT stands for Distributed Hash Table but I don't know what it does (here's an explanation that made no sense to me at all: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/DHT). I do know a lot of trackers don't like it so it is in your best interest to turn it off. randytravis posted here a while back on how to disable it but I haven't been able to track it down. Meanwhile, this htread has a couple of really good links about how to configure Az: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=22117. Anyway, hopefully he sees this and steps in. You could also try PMing him I bet he wouldn't mind.

[U2Lynne]

Here's that thread where he explains how to disable it: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=24231

[PBrane]

Originally Posted by gsmyth79

NAT means port forwarding essentially. So what you need to do is open up the same port in your firewall, router and client. The older ports of 6881-6889 are not generally used anymore because many ISPs have started blocking those ports. In fact many trackers require you use a port other than 6881-6889. I used to have a link to a list of what ports are used for what but basically every port over 50,000 isn't used, so pick a high one. Plug that into your BT port in Azureus, open that port up in your firewall if you use one, and open that port up in your router. Each model is different so go to http://portforward.com/ and find out how to do it for yours. After that, restart everything and you should be good to go and have green smiley faces in Az. TTD sometimes tells you you're firewalled even though you may not be so go to http://btfaq.com/natcheck.pl and enter in the relevant info to check it.

DHT stands for Distributed Hash Table but I don't know what it does (here's an explanation that made no sense to me at all: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/DHT). I do know a lot of trackers don't like it so it is in your best interest to turn it off. randytravis posted here a while back on how to disable it but I haven't been able to track it down. Meanwhile, this htread has a couple of really good links about how to configure Az: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=22117. Anyway, hopefully he sees this and steps in. You could also try PMing him I bet he wouldn't mind.

Well thanks for taking the time of day on this... I've been through everything to get the ports set up and the encryption activated etc. so my set up should be as good as it gets. It seems to be humming along OK, but I can't say I've noticed any change in performance yet. Actually I'm rather pleased it all seems to still be working; I get nervous making changes I don't understand.
Thanks to U2Lynne as well

[gsmyth79]

If you have green smilies you're good to go.