connecting with firewall
 

heya :)


this *should* be an easy question for the developers :)

I've been running several of those "file-sharing" programs, and since I am behind a firewall (linux-box) I always had to forward all traffic from certain ports.

I haven't been able to discover the ports to forward for Xolox yet; please tell me which ports Xolox wants to use, and if this is on basis of UDP or TCP, the rest will be no prob :)

Default gnutella-port (6346) doesn't seem to work.

Thanks :)

*oops* apologies: I should've looked through the forums beforing asking my question. It has been discussed before.. on the other hand: I couldn't find any answers to my question on the forums.

I've tried a bit, and it seems that it *does* work without port-forwarding. Right now I am waiting to see if anyone can download from me.. curious

For anyone interested --> this is the solution if you work with iptables and a linux-box between you and the internet.

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d $OUTSIDE -s! $INSIDE_NET -p tcp --dport 6346 -j DNAT --to-destination $INSIDE_HOST

$OUTSIDE := your internet ip-adres
$INSIDE_NET := your inside network (something like 192.168.0.0/16 )
$INSIDE_HOST := the computer running Xolox (192.168.0.2 or something)

Short answer: Gnutella user can only download from others as long as one of both can handle "incoming connections". If both can't (both behind firewalls or masquerading-routers), upload does not work.

One solution is port forwarding into your LAN (e.g. TCP 6346, I think that is what you have done above?), but it does only work with an forceIP option (which Xolox does _NOT_ provide yet, many other gnutella clients do, e.g Limewire, Phex or Bearshare). Another solution is using a socks proxy (which Xolox DOES support). A third solution is using a gnutella-proxy or gnutella-masquerading-module (which is not available yet, see here). A fourth solution is for geeks only, tunneling gnutella traffic through another protocoll and host (but this is definitely more computer geek stuff, they know what to do).

Long answer: Gnutella download is Peer2Peer, so the restriction descibed above is a limitation due to TCP/IP protocoll... or to be more specific because of blocking firewalls or IP-masquerading/NAT-routers which can't handle incoming traffic without specifc modules. If you're interested in technical details, please read gnutella documents/specification about Pushrequest and Pushroutes + (Linux) Networking Howto.

Sorry, I won't describe it here, it would take too long (see here if you can understand german, it's a detailed description which I may translate next weeks).

Hope it helps, Moak :)