Dear Mr. Evans:

Much of what you offered in your post is valuable, but I need to take exception with a couple of your points.

First of all, my Internet address is 192.168.0.100, which is an address you ask people to block (192.168.*, as you put it). Since I am acting as a Gnutella ultrapeer, this seems contrary to the best interests of the various users who may have read your post. I promise that I am not a host who has any ill wishes toward any Gnutella participants. I am working hard, and using my computer's fast connection, to facilitate the Gnutella experience.

It may be that you associated the 192.168 series of Internet numbers with *routers.* Yes, I am running behind a NAT router. I have two computers in my home, and need a router to distribute my Ethernet connection between the two home computers. One *must* have a router to distribute an Ethernet connection, and routers have this thing about using standard Internet addresses.

I had to study the technical details of LimeWire and the Gnutella network in order to configure my router so that it would allow me to become an ultrapeer (supernode). The router's internal, inherent firewall made it impossible for me to become an ultrapeer, but I *fixed* that!

Technical details: Windows XP, Dell Dimension 2400 (low-end) computer, Broadcom Ethernet card, cable Internet connection using standard 10/100 Ethernet, Dynex DSL/Ethernet Router model DX-E401. Standard twisted-pair straight-through Ethernet cables connecting everything. Motorola Surfboard cable modem, Ethernet compliant. ISP guarantees 3 megabit download speed, but I have seen it go much higher than that in brief spurts - exeeding 10 megabits. The guaranteed speed is faster than T1, but cannot go so high as T3.

Now in order to allow my computer to act as a Gnutella ultrapeer, I had to reconfigure my router, because the router's internal firewall, by default, was configured to disallow straight-through communication except on the most necessary ports. Configuring my computer and it's Internet connection to act as a LimeWire ultrapeer was a two-step process.

The first thing I had to do was reconfigure the Dynex router. The router can be forced to pass, to forward unchanged, communication on selected ports. The primary Gnutella port is 6346, so I told the router to accept LimeWire as an application that would require the router to force passage of packets on port 6346.

Then I opened LimeWire, and opened Tools->Options->Advanced->Firewall Config, and clicked on "Manual Port Forward," making sure that the port being forwarded was 6346.

Telling my router that it *must* forward all port-6346 messages to LimeWire unaltered, and telling LimeWire that it must listen on port 6346, well, it did the trick! Before I made this change, I was always a leaf under an ultrapeer. After making this change, I have become an ultrapeer.

The key was the router. The router's default settings disallowed the kind of straight-through packet forwarding that LimeWire (or any other Gnutella client) needs in order to provide free, uninhibited access to the network.

I hope this helps everyone. I can provide more technical details, if needed.

But please don't block addresses in the 192.168 range - that's a "solution" that will inhibit my ability to contribute.