Korean Job Discussion Forums

wormholes101 · Joined: 11 Mar 2003

Just shifted house and got a new internet connection set up. Unfortunately, only KT is available in out area. Anyway, the IP is dynamic and since I have to use a router (gf wants her laptop connected too) I have an issue with port forwarding my torrents.

Are any of you torrent guys using a router on a dynamic IP? Are you having to constantly adjust your router settings to keep your ports open? Or is there another solution?

Love to have some feedback on this one. I asked the service technicia and he says that KT says they don't do static IPs any longer.

proustme · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Location: Nowon-gu

Is there no way to assign forwarding ports just for your IPv4 (192.168.x.x) IP?

hugekebab · Joined: 05 Jan 2008

It's a problem mate:

Dynamic IP Address - The dynamic ip address is not really a type of ip address. The dynamic only relates to how an ip address is assigned. Your router hands out these ip addresses to computers every time they are rebooted. This means that every time your computer is rebooted, its ip address can change. You should have a static, not dynamic ip address if you are trying to do port forwarding. In a port forwarding configuration you must specify an ip address to forward the ports to. Let's say you do that, and then your ip address changes. The ports are now forwarded to the wrong ip address, so your port forwarding configuration just quit working.

That's off that site that's dedicated to port forwarding. I find the providers over manage their pipes in this country, and it can be a nightmare for bittorrent.

Check what ips it assigns you. Are they always completely different or is it within a range? Is it just your router assigning to two computers, and maybe swapping them depending on which one is online first?

If it's within a range and not totally random, set a different port to forward on each IP e.g. ip 8.9.000.0000 port 16000 ip 8.9.100.000 port 16001 and then you will have to check before you start bittorrent for your ip, then just change the port in utorrent when you switch it on (there's a quick check to see if yur ports are open on utorrent - options - speedguide.)

Also do a check on a number of ports to see if any are open without forwarding http://www.portforward.com/help/portcheck.htm

Try encrypting your bittorrent files in utorrent (this worked for me.) your isp may be throttling and it may not be a port problem.

1. (Options, Preferences, Bittorrent) Change the Protocol Encryption to Forced. This will force encryption on all outgoing packets and will not fallback to un-encrypted mode if the peer refuses to co-operate. Good to connect to only encryption-enabled peers.

2. (Options, Preferences, Bittorrent). Remove the check for "Allow Incoming Legacy Connections". This will make all your outgoing and incoming packets fully encrypted, except for tracker communications. Peers using torrent software that doesn't support encryption are dropped.

Try assigning a random port after each restart to utorrent (it may be that the ip discovers ports running bt and closes them, but I would try encryption before doing this.) options, preferences, connection, randomize each port.

If none of the above works, then this site has a solution to the dynamic ip problem:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=8639

When you try these, if one step does not work, then undo the previous step. If you do manage to find an open port, or to forward a port successfully, you may still find speeds are slow, in which case use the simple encryption option above (just a click on the utorrent menu.)

I'm no expert on any of this, but had to do some reading to try and solve my own problem (had to forward my ports AND encrypt to get bittorrent working.)

wormholes101 · Joined: 11 Mar 2003

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys. I have a new approach and I will report back to let you know if it has worked successfully. Fingers crossed!

red_devil · Joined: 30 Jun 2008 Location: Korea

I've never had a problem. You only get assigned a new IP if you restart your computer or come back from sleep. I just leave the computer running, sleep the display. Either way a dynamic IP has no effect on seeding or downloading Torrents as it's using the .torrent file as the reference, not your IP.

wormholes101 · Joined: 11 Mar 2003

To the above posters.

Every port forwarding guide always says that you need a static IP from your ISP.

In the past, when I've had a dynamic IP and a router, when my IP changed, I needed to adjust the settings on the router so that the ports were forwarded correctly. If I didn't change the settings, I was "firewalled" which made the incoming connections very slow to connect.

Of course BT still works but just very ineffectively.

Anyway, I may have sorted it out now. I've rebooted my computer a couple of times now and it is still port-forwarded correctly so things are looking promising. Still I will give it some time!

martypants · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Location: Ulsan, South Korea

aphase · Joined: 27 Apr 2006

You shouldn't be affected by whether you have a dynamic or static IP (By this i mean the IP assigned by your ISP to your internet line). You can still do port forwarding on a dynamic IP, if you have a modern router that is. Most routers detect the IP automatically, and do port-forwarding without further adjustment. At least thats the way mine is.

The important thing is to set your router to give your computer a static IP WITHIN your LAN. You set this up by telling the router the MAC address of the computer/device and specifying what IP address you want for it. Then you can specify which ports are to be forwarded for each device.