Avoiding a "LowID" in eMule with a router

[DreamThrall]

If you don't use eMule, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about... but basically, eMule won't allow a connection between two people who are behind a NAT device, which essentially cuts out most of the people you would be able to share files with. I was reading through the help file, and got the impression that there is a way to set up port forwarding on the router so that you can get a "high" ID, enabling a connection to anyone on eMule. I followed the directions exactly - there was even a set of directions specifically for my router, the LinkSys BEFSR41, but I still can't seem to connect with a "high" ID... Has anyone else had any experience with this?

 

[psyno]

Well, can you post how you set up your router to forward the apporpriate ports to your machine? Perhaps we can find a mistake. I'm going to guess that you're also using DHCP and therefor you should be doubly sure that the to which IP you forward is indeed correct. On my setup at home I get around this by limiting the range of addresses assignable by DHCP and give a few computers static IPs.

A screen shot of the setup screen would be most helpful.

 

[lePobz]

On most modern routers you don't have to configure the IP which you want the ports forwarding, just the ports themselves... the router then picks up which machine on the lan is trying to access the ports, and opens them for that specific machine for the duration of the traffic on them ports.

 

[psyno]

That's a feature of NAT but it won't help for listening on a port where an outbound connection is never attempted. Anyway I happen to be familiar with his particular model, which is a smaller version of mine.

 

[SidewinderX]

The easy solution is to use Bit Torrent, not emule

 

[DreamThrall]

how do you search for files over bittorrent?

 

[DreamThrall]

Actually, I disabled DHCP and have mine set statically.

On another note which is probably relavant, I have a VoIP Phone on the same subnet. On the router, I have DMZ enabled, and the DMZ host address is that of the IP Phone's.

Here are the port forwarding and triggering config pages for the router:

www.shreveportvotes.org/misc/forwarding.jpg
www.shreveportvotes.org/misc/triggering.jpg

thanks for the help guys!

 

[Direwolf]

I've always had the same problem, and eventually just gave up trying to fix it out of apathy. I've never been able to not get what I want on Emule, it just takes more time usually.

 

[lePobz]

Well anyone using eMule through a router should use the following info to config the router with:

In the firewall tab, add a 'special application' and give it the trigger '4661', and the ports '4660-4712'

This will allow all emule traffic to be routed directly to the machine that uses emule (can only be one machine on the network using emule at any one time)

 

[DreamThrall]

Well anyone using eMule through a router should use the following info to config the router with:

In the firewall tab, add a 'special application' and give it the trigger '4661', and the ports '4660-4712'

This will allow all emule traffic to be routed directly to the machine that uses emule (can only be one machine on the network using emule at any one time)

Tried that, still won't work :-\ If there is a way to use BitTorrent I would definately do that... but I haven't been able to find a good search engine.

 

[Asus]

I set one of my PCs up as DMZ. Works for me.

Link

 

[DreamThrall]

I would do that, but I have to leave my VoIP phone set up as DMZ or else it won't work right :-\

 

[lePobz]

I don't wanna set up a DMZ since software firewalls are never 100% secure (they can be brought down with the right code) and I don't have my internal network firewalled. It's just another thing to admin, and i'm a really lazy person.

Allowing ports through the firewall is a much safer way than setting up a DMZ in my opinion, mite take a bit longer but its worth the effort. Infections can always spread through the network from the DMZ machine effectively rendering the routers hardware firewall pointless anyway.

 

[DreamThrall]

I did it!!!!

I just had to set up uPnP forwarding on my router for the right ports, and that seemed to do the trick!

 

[Direwolf]

What was it exactly that you did? I'm curious.

 

[DreamThrall]

On my router configuration, there's a feature called "uPnP" forwarding... I'm not sure how it is different from regular port forwarding, as it looks the same, and is set up the same... but setting up the incoming ports (TCP 4662, UDP 4672, TCP 4711) on that page (uPnP) seemed to make it work.

 

[theGreenBunny]

Err. AFAIK uPnP is not good, it's very very insecure. I'm not sure the insecurity found using it on normal pcs also applies to routers though. I'm not an expert on it, but there was a lot of fuss about it a while ago.

You may want to run a security check like this one to see if your router's upnp is exploitable or something. Or wait until someone more knowledgeable in upnp matters posts here.

 

[DreamThrall]

I think the big hubub had to do with WinXP's uPnP features... from what I understand, all I'm doing is telling the router to forward those ports directly to my computer.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Weird.

I have the same router as you and the same ports forwarded for emule and i get a high id all the time.

 

[Direwolf]

Ahah! Found a fix for the problem without fowarding right here:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1/66716

 

[DreamThrall]

I can't do that - I have a VoIP phone that has to stay set up as the DMZ host. :-\

^^That probably has to do with why yours worked and mine didn't Mr Fusion.