If I understand the problem, than without force IP two gnutella nodes each behind a NAT firewall will not be able to exchange files. What makes me wonder is that if I use the force IP option than I get a flurry of connections, and these change all the time. I know that my IP number is correct (I checked with www.whatip.com), and I have also enabled port forwarding in my Airport base station so incoming requests are routed to my gnutella node. If I do not use the force IP option I do get stable incoming and outgoing connections in the connection window. I did also log in to a remote node I have shell access on and did a telnet myip 6346 and I do get a connect. This makes me wonder if the force IP option does work at all.