I think everyone needs to be careful about forcing your IP address. You are, in fact, broadcasting to the entire net and thereby possibly opening your computer up to invasion by all the nasties out there. It's possible, so be careful.

Technically you are not broadcasting your IP address onto the Internet. That language is suggestive and it leads people to believe that their boxes (computers) are actively shouting the ip addresses to the Internet. This is not true. In context, when you force your IP address in LimeWire you are forcing the ip address of your firewall/router (which is NOT your computer!) -Remember this is why no one could upload from you.

Your IP for your computer is probably 192.168.0.x --->router/firewalls-ip->(172.15.x.x.) <- this ip is always public whether you force it or not.

Now, what does happen is this-- when people search for files on Limewire your machine not only returns a lists of files it has but it also returns the ip of where to get those files from, people who have their Limewire software configured to show location can see the ip address of the machines returning the results but, pay attention even if you hide this information a download request would show the ip during the transfer!

Note: Some people fall into the trap of thinking that an ICMP message is the only way someone can tell if a machine is alive or not. This about it this way ICMP message work like this:

Bob is standing in a dark closet. (Your machine on the network!)
Pete is looking or Bob. (Potentially a hacker:-( )
Pete says Bob are you there? (someone looking to see if a machine is alive (ICMP -> PING))
Bob replies Yes I'm here. (i.e. your machine responding to a query=ICMP PING)

The End Now, when you cut off ICMP messages the converstation stops because Bob doesn't respond to Pete.

But, for several years now that more and more machine are not responding (stealth scanning -been around for a while has basically made not responding some what useless in attempt to hide a machine from remote probing.)

Consider our story:

Bob is standing in a dark closet. (Your machine on the network!)
Pete is looking or Bob. (Potentially a hacker:-( )
Pete Throws a Brick in the closet! (someone sending specially formatted data to your computer.)
Bob replies Ouch! (someone listing to the responses!)

Are you safer?


A complete discussion of security is beyond the scope of this thread but the last poster does correctly point out a concern that I am confident has been overlooked by many file-sharers and that is basic computer security.

For those of you that are interested I highly recommend that you do the following:

Goto http://www.dslreports.com/scan

use the tool to scan your machine. If the report comes back with open services that you don't understanding please post your concerns here and I'll help you get that resolved. If the report shows that you have open disks + services send me an email at security(remove_the_no_spam)@leeware.com and I will provide you with some help and information on securing your connection.


Thanks for your cooperation and I hope this helps.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Okay, I have installed LW 2.7.13. I have tuned off Zonealarm. I then went to another PC in my house and tried to access a file that was on my other PC. I found that file, and my IP address was shown in black, indicating no firewall problems. But when I highlighted my IP address, and clicked to download it, it immediately went into the Requerey mode. And I had no other uploads going on that PC. So why can't I access my PC ( i.e. share files with others) when everything looks good?

I assume both your computers are using the same internet connection via router? In that case you will not be able to download from yourself. Don't worry, others will still be able to download from you.

Yeah, but, I'm the one who posted all the previous post's as unregistered. I do not understand why on older versions of Limewire I would have 100+ uploads per evening, and now have 8 or less. The system depends on sharing, which I like to do. So I'm trying to figure out what has changed that makes that appear to not happen anymore. Read all the above posts, and you will see what I mean.

Well - you can't force others to download from you and the newer version has no upload/download bugs I know of.

Well - you can't force others to download from you. The new version at least does not have any upload/download bugs I know of...

I have to agree with Trap_Jaw there are no known upload or download bugs with the latest version of LimeWire (At least I haven't had any. If you have multiple public net IP addresses you can download from your self. but, I assume that you you have multple PCs behind one public net ip address in which case you probably won't be able to download from yourself.)

With all of that being said. I am suggesting that you do the following.

Go to my website click contact us and send me an coordinate a test time. I'll search for the files you specify and attempt to download them from you I can also decode the results coming from your machine to get an idea of what's happening with the transaction.


Looking forward to hearing from you.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

I have the same problems posted above.

I am running Limewire 2.7.13.

To clarify:

1. Under earlier versions of Limewire I would receive reports of many successful uploads from other users.

2. I know my own IP, 24.xxx., etc., it is set to push/force IP from behind the firewall, as has always been the case, with previous versions of Limewire as well. This IP works fine w/ apps such as Snapperhead allowing people to take pix of my desktop which is also forcing behind a router/firewall.

3. Nothing has changed except the Limewire build, and yet I am getting hardly anyone uploading from me.

4. I *know* something is wrong. It is not a simple matter of forcing the IP as I have had this in place under this version of Limewire and under previous versions.

5. I have disabled and disconnected my wireless router when using Limewire to take that away from the equasion and am on a simple cable modem connection. The wireless router is new, and I will worry about configuring it with Limewire later. If we can figure out a basic cable modem configuration, then I will re-implement my wireless router while using Limewire. For now, please know there is **no wireless router** in the equasion; my Mac 10.2 OS X 10.2's firewall is enabled but certain ports such as those used for Limewire are allowed. Port-mapping 10.2's firewall with Limewire works; I know because some people are getting through. Again what remains terribly frustrating is that this exact set-up worked fine under previous versions of Limewire.

~~~~~~~~

As a separate issue,



I have set the Upload Limit to 100 for "number of uploads" from a single user. Despite doing this, I am receiving reports from users who are on, let's be generous and say their 10th upload (not their 100th) of "Upload Limit Reached." They might reach 10 if I leave Limewire on 48-72 hours. Question: Is there a cut-off to the number of uploads allowed per IP if I have set it to 100 and the IP obviously has gotten nowhere close?

~~~~~~~

As others have mentioned, I can go for several hours and have maybe 4 uploads whereas before I would have maybe 50. Something is wrong. If you have 50 successful uploads versus 4, the program is not working as well. !!!!

Actually something else has changed too. LimeWire has started to cluster its nodes to shield you from traffic. You are receiving less upload requests from non-limewire hosts. Normally I would assume that limewire users and other gnutella users have the same download behaviour, but maybe this is not the case. In addition upload queues have been introduced and usually, - and if you are in somebody's upload queue you would not try to download from alternate locations as aggressively as you would without upload queues. So maybe this is another reason for the changed number of upload requests. There's nothing wrong with the program at all. (Well, older versions of LimeWire or other gnutella clients that don't support upload queues will not be able to download from you if there are clients in your upload queue).

And I guess you did not set up your router for port-forwarding, in which case forcing your IP is completely useless. Nothing's wrong. The network has just changed.

I would think that LimeWire set your overall upload limit to a lower value than what you set as "max upload slots" value. It does that at times, when it seems you can't sustain that many uploads.