Hello,

I'm a new user of LW 2.13 (free so far, but pro soon). I finally solved the problem of how to connect a Mac via Airport to the Gnutella network with a careful read of the docs and forum, but it wasn't obvious to this newbie, so I'm passing along a tip.

This is for MacOS / OS X users with an Airport Base Station who are trying to connect a Mac via the ABS to the internet. The new (2.0) version of the Base Station has a built-in firewall, and as the Limewire docs and forums tell you, unless you get around this, you will not get a single download. This is because many of the servers at the other end have firewalls, and when you do a pull, it fails, and ...

... well never mind. You don't need to hear the theory again, you just need to know how to set the ABS to solve the problem. I'll provide the procedure for the OS X version of the Airport Admin Utility -- the MacOS 9 version should be similar. Once you've ensured that you have a proper airport connection (e.g., you can get e-mail, etc.), open the AAU (it's in the Utilities folder, inside the Applications folder, of your boot volume) and click the 'Port Mapping' tab. Click 'Add'. In the drop down box, you put the following values in the respective fields:

Public port --> 6346
Private port --> 6346
Private address --> the last part of your PRIVATE IP, which you can find in the 'TCP/IP' panel of the network control panel. For my system, my private IP was '10.0.1.2', so I put the value '2' into the Private address field. As you'll see, the Mac puts in the '10.0.1.' part for you -- you can't change it.

Click OK. You'll see your new port map listed in the panel. You DO have to 'apply' the setting in the Airport panel. Then close the AAU. That should be it -- you now can connect without problems, as you've "mapped" the port Gnutella uses, 6346, from your public to your private IP.

If you find this doesn't work, do a re-start on your computer. If it still doesn't work, check to see if your ISP doesn't allow '6346' to come through -- this is a problem, particularly at colleges and at major corporations.


Steve