# Red light on utorrent 1.6.1



## newguy (May 27, 2007)

My OS is Windows XP. At the bottom of my utorrent 1.6.1, there's a red sign with a ! which means "Not connectable. A firewall/router is limiting your nework traffic. You need to open up a port so others can connect to you." I already checked my Windows Firewall under the Exceptions tab and utorrent is already checked. What can I do to fix this? The current port for utorrent is 32730. Please help me, keeping in mind that I am not very knowledgable about computers other than basic operations. Please give me a detailed, step-by-step, idiot-proof set of instructions!!! thx!


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## zekrahminator (May 27, 2007)

We'll assume for the sake of legality that you're using utorrent for, um, fast downloads of linux distributions .


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## ex_reven (May 27, 2007)

Do you have a router?
Or is your computer the only system connected to your internet?


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## Wile E (May 27, 2007)

uTorrent's uPNP (Universal Plug-n-Play) features don't work like they're supposed to. If you're not familiar with port forwarding in your router (I'm assuming you have one), my suggestion is to switch to Azureus. It's uPNP works flawlessly, and it is actually more tweakable than uTorrent, once you get up the nerve to start messin around with settings.

But if you're dead set on using uTorrent, we need to know if you have a router, and what brand and model it is.


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## theonetruewill (May 27, 2007)

http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm
It couldn't be any easier. The reason people prefer utorrent is that its so light on resources. I much prefer it to Azureus AKA the super-resource-hog.


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## Wile E (May 27, 2007)

Hey!! Nice find there, theone. That's getting bookmarked. As far as Azureus vs uTorrent, I prefer Azureus because it is more powerful than uTorrent. (I'm one of those few nerds that actually took the time to figure out what all the settings do. lol) It's also cross-platform. I have Macs and Linux boxes on my network. I can control Azureus on any machine, from any machine. If I open the same torrent on multiple machines, it will also share the pieces between them across the LAN, with no ratio penalties.

EDIT: But I fully understand why people like uTorrent. It's a great client.


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## ex_reven (May 27, 2007)

Thats a good guide 

For some reason, in the guide for my router the router buttons are different.
Intstead of it being called port forwarding its called applications or something.


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## theonetruewill (May 27, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Hey!! Nice find there, theone. That's getting bookmarked. As far as Azureus vs uTorrent, I prefer Azureus because it is more powerful than uTorrent. (I'm one of those few nerds that actually took the time to figure out what all the settings do. lol) It's also cross-platform. I have Macs and Linux boxes on my network. I can control Azureus on any machine, from any machine. If I open the same torrent on multiple machines, it will also share the pieces between them across the LAN, with no ratio penalties.
> 
> EDIT: But I fully understand why people like uTorrent. It's a great client.



I download too much.... My laptop filled up the other day. I thought I was fine, 27GB's left....then I realised it was only 27*MB*'s  oops!

This new HDD is 250GB and its already only got 80Gb free. Good old utorrent.


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## ex_reven (May 27, 2007)

get 3 7200.10 perp drives 
1 terabyte for joo


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## Wile E (May 27, 2007)

theonetruewill said:


> I download too much.... My laptop filled up the other day. I thought I was fine, 27GB's left....then I realised it was only 27*MB*'s  oops!
> 
> This new HDD is 250GB and its already only got 80Gb free. Good old utorrent.



Hahahaha! I fully understand that. Anime is a weakness for me. Between all my boxes and externals, I have about 2TB of storage. A grand total of 250GB are free. I also have about 250 DVDs worth of data floating around. hahahaha!


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## keakar (May 27, 2007)

i have a router and a modem and i just do the following:

under "connection " make sure the boxes "enable upnp" and "add to windows firewall exceptions" is checked and if you want to really speed up your downloading then set the total global upload rate at 15 but to upload set it back to zero.

under bit torrent i recommend unchecking the two DHT boxes to disable the DHT this will really turbocharge your download speeds.

all i did was download utorrent and set the settings as i just described and all works fine.

try delete the utorrent from your firewall and add/remove utorrent delete any utorrent folders that might be left over and start fresh. utorrent sets itself up to run with no need to deal with all that port forwarding crap which will end up leaving your computer wide open to the internet crooks.


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## Wile E (May 27, 2007)

Disabling DHT shouldn't speed up your torrents. It should do just the opposite, slow them down. All DHT does is adds peers that aren't on the torrent's tracker.


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## keakar (May 27, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Disabling DHT shouldn't speed up your torrents. It should do just the opposite, slow them down. All DHT does is adds peers that aren't on the torrent's tracker.



i try both and disabling DHT will double my download speed due to less peers checking since it is constantly rechecking all peers it has less to do and doubles the download speeds. now in a rare case it may need extra peers not on the torrents tracker (very very rare instances)
then in that case it may not be as fast as before but it is a minor difference and hardly an issue.

if you doubt what i say then try it and compare the same download both ways and see.

i am a regular downloader so i know what works best for me.


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## Wile E (May 27, 2007)

I have tried both, and I consistently get better performance with DHT enabled, regardless of the number of peers on the tracker. But I do see one major difference between us, I use Azureus. Our connections may be different as well, causing the differing performance. And as far as being a regular downloader, check my previous comments. I'm not what you would consider a casual torrent user. lol


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## keakar (May 28, 2007)

Wile E said:


> I have tried both, and I consistently get better performance with DHT enabled, regardless of the number of peers on the tracker. But I do see one major difference between us, I use Azureus. Our connections may be different as well, causing the differing performance. And as far as being a regular downloader, check my previous comments. I'm not what you would consider a casual torrent user. lol



well your talking about Azureus and we were talking about Utorrent 1.6.1

my settings and comments are only about Utorrent which the original post was asking about


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## DaMulta (May 28, 2007)

zekrahminator said:


> We'll assume for the sake of legality that you're using utorrent for, um, fast downloads of linux distributions .


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## Wile E (May 28, 2007)

keakar said:


> well your talking about Azureus and we were talking about Utorrent 1.6.1
> 
> my settings and comments are only about Utorrent which the original post was asking about


If you read my first post in this thread, you'll see why I mentioned Azureus. I suggested he try it instead, if he can't get UPnP to work with uTorrent.


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## keakar (May 28, 2007)

Wile E said:


> If you read my first post in this thread, you'll see why I mentioned Azureus. I suggested he try it instead, if he can't get UPnP to work with uTorrent.



i understand


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## newguy (May 29, 2007)

*Router Info*

hi every1. sorry for not stayin in touch. my computer's been acting awful lately, and it still is. (c thread under hardware). my router is the 2wire 1701HG from SBC Yahoo! (now AT&T Yahoo!). The "Port used for incoming connections" for utorrent is 32730. there are also 2 other computers using the router to connect to the internet.

I already tried using http://www.portforward.com/english/r...outerindex.htm but when I type in the ip address 172.16.0.1 into the address bar like it says and press enter, the page says "This program cannot display the webpage." also, i think the instructions might be for an older version of utorrent because under Preferences, my utorrent says Connection, not Network Options like it says in the instructions.

by the way, i tried keakar's suggestions to no avail. but thx anyway. i know u were trying to help.

finally, my utorrent now displays a yellow triangular sign rather than a red circle. it means "No incoming connections. Unless the icon turns green, it could indicate a problem with your network configuration." hope this info helps. i really appreciate all u guys for ur input. thx.


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## Kursah (May 29, 2007)

Can you access your Router via IE browser to allow that port to be opened to your PC?


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## theonetruewill (May 29, 2007)

newguy said:


> hi every1. sorry for not stayin in touch. my computer's been acting awful lately, and it still is. (c thread under hardware). my router is the 2wire 1701HG from SBC Yahoo! (now AT&T Yahoo!). The "Port used for incoming connections" for utorrent is 32730. there are also 2 other computers using the router to connect to the internet.
> 
> I already tried using http://www.portforward.com/english/r...outerindex.htm but when I type in the ip address 172.16.0.1 into the address bar like it says and press enter, the page says "This program cannot display the webpage." also, i think the instructions might be for an older version of utorrent because under Preferences, my utorrent says Connection, not Network Options like it says in the instructions.
> 
> ...



By the way, I have this problem when using my...."alternative" wireless connection, and I can still download very fast.
Maybe the ip that you're typing in is incorrect. Right click on your wireless connection and go to "Status."

Then go to the "Support" tab. The ip of your router is the one after "Default Gateway"


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## Wile E (May 29, 2007)

"alternative" wireless connection, eh? You naughty, naughty neighbor. lol


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## theonetruewill (May 29, 2007)

Wile E said:


> "alternative" wireless connection, eh? You naughty, naughty neighbor. lol



It's only because our one couldn't be put it for a year. Shared line or some BS. In the end it was shoddy engineering anyway so I forced BT to get it working, as in their fine print it said if it was a BT line they would defineitly be able to give us some kind of broadband.

By the way, it was a VERY fast connection  Well utilised too. They just weren't taking full advantage of that bandwidth. I was merely....borrowing and using it to it's full potential.


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## Wile E (May 29, 2007)

Oh, I see. So you were "helping" them by utilizing the full bandwidth they payed for. lol


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## theonetruewill (May 29, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Oh, I see. So you were "helping" them by utilizing the full bandwidth they payed for. lol



Of course. I wouldn't do anything else.


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## zekrahminator (May 29, 2007)

I think one of our TPU members got thrown into jail for using one of those "alternative connections", it really is illegal....

but it's $20-70 a month cheaper .


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## theonetruewill (May 29, 2007)

zekrahminator said:


> I think one of our TPU members got thrown into jail for using one of those "alternative connections", it really is illegal....
> 
> but it's $20-70 a month cheaper .



What? I don't know what you mean . No seriously "my friend" (who I've been talking about the whole time instead of me) stopped using it when the police decided to get hot on it. Not that "my friend" ever did anything like this of course.


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## zekrahminator (May 29, 2007)

Oh, I didn't know that. 

It's more fun to tell people you're mooching off their wifi anyways . 

Right until the police "get hot on it" .


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## theonetruewill (May 29, 2007)

zekrahminator said:


> Oh, I didn't know that.
> 
> It's more fun to tell people you're mooching off their wifi anyways .
> 
> Right until the police "get hot on it" .



Fortunately I never... I mean... "my friend" never got that far down the line as to involve the police. Phew.


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## Scythez0r (May 29, 2007)

My ISP blacklisted torrents    so I can get like 15 kb/s max. New Zealand broadband atm is pathetic...


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## Wile E (May 29, 2007)

Scythez0r said:


> My ISP blacklisted torrents    so I can get like 15 kb/s max. New Zealand broadband atm is pathetic...


Did you try different ports? Some newer clients also offer encryption, so your ISP can't tell what the traffic is by packet sniffing.


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## Scythez0r (May 29, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Did you try different ports? Some newer clients also offer encryption, so your ISP can't tell what the traffic is by packet sniffing.



Hmmm... thats an idea.


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## keakar (May 30, 2007)

so to clear things up a little, are you trying to upload or download?

Utorrent sets up the firewall exceptions automatically for downloading but not uploading. if you want to upload and you need port forwarding connections, then Utorrent website gives you step by step setup instructions for every type router so look there.

you said that the message read:

"Not connectable. A firewall/router is limiting your nework traffic. You need to open up a port so others can connect to you." 

all this means is the connection is limited to downloading only


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