was my port blocked by isp - fixed but just curious

[jjbtnc]

Hello all - lots of posts here about opening ports and firewalls and routers so not really sure if this should have been added to another thread but.............

I noticed recently that utorrent 1.6 was popping up the red icon and saying a firewall/network is blocking etc but utorrent seemed to be working fine - connecting ok and speeds fast as per usual.

I had done nothing to my static ips, router settings or zonealarm free settings but double checked them (i'm well practised in my router settings and port forwarding) and triple checked them - i had used the same port number for over a year now.

I happened to do a fresh install of xp on a friends laptop who shares the place where i live and router, set it up exactly as it was before, again checked the router settings for his laptop and it was the same as before but checked and double checked - same problem, red icon in utorrent on his laptop and saying a firewall blah blah blah.

I'm 100% sure every setting on my pc, his laptop, zonealarm free firewall, and the router was identical - even did a reset of the router to factory settings and then set up again - still the same problem.

Seeing as it wasn't actually making a difference i was going to leave it but on a whim changed the port number in utorrent on both pcs and then went in to the router and edited the port forwarding rules to the new port (edited what was there not delete and recreate)

now get the green icon and everything reports ok and still works ok, swap ports back in both utorrent and the router and red icon but everything works, swap back to the new port and green icon and everything ok?

This has left me pretty confused as to what was going on and as i said i had the previous port numbers working for over a year, the above situation was happening whether i had peerguardian2 and zonealarm turned off or on.

I don't believe i have any other software that could effect things, windows firewall off etc

Anyway everything is good now and green icons a plenty but i was just wondering if the only likely answer to what was going on was that my isp had blocked the ports i had previously been using for over a year?

The ports i was previously using were 52459 and 52460, my isp is cable and wireless Guernsey which is a small uk island off the coast of france. We've never had the problems other countries have had with things like the blocking of p2p and voip ports and we don't have usage caps - perhaps due to small population with good communication links

Just curious more than anything - especially as if the isp did have something to do with it how come utorrent flagged up a red icon BUT still worked fine?

If it had just effected my pc i may have thought something has got corrupted on my install but as i said the same problem/quirk was observed on a pc with a fresh install of xp and utorrent.

[Calais_Kitten]

I am having trouble with utorrent atm,with downloading movies.I have upgraded my net speed from 512/128 to 1500/256 but getting a movie doesnt seem to go much faster.I've done a lot of changing preferences etc but when it came to ports,it said that my port wasn't open so therefore that might make speeds slower.A lot of this doesn't make a lot of sense to me so im really trying to find some help,because im not an expert when it comes to this sort of stuff.I've tried searching for info on the net on how to forward my port to utorrent or open it and i havent had much luck.Is there anyone out there that could help me or point me in the right direction.Ive found a few sites that make you download port forwarding sorftware,and i dont wanna do that i just want a program or a know how that i can download or read?If anyone could help that would be absolutely fabulous!

[Switeck]

If you were firewalled before in uTorrent, upgrading your line to a faster speed won't fix that.

Some software such as antivirus software can act as a software firewall...as too can very bad viruses and trojans.