[Leaplist] Re: Fedora 9

[Phil Barnett]

On Wednesday 14 May 2008 11:25:17 am Jim Hartley wrote:
> Oh, one other thing I forget to mention - there was an icon on the
> download window, looked like cell-phone bars, and on a mouseover I got a
> hint message that it might be slow if I had a firewall or was "NATted" -
> not sure if that is significant, or if I should do something about it.

Oh, yeah, that will be a problem.

BitTorrent punishes those who don't share the parts they have already 
downloaded. If you have a NAT or Firewall in place, then the people outside 
that are making requests to your computer to help in the process are getting 
refused. This lowers your score at all the other sites and eventually gets 
you 'Snubbed'.

I have two rules on my firewall that explicitly forward specific ports to my 
desktop. This allows me to participate in the BitTorrent swarm and get good 
scores. Good sharing scores get you faster downloads.

-- 
Waiting for sunspots.