Port used to be open, but are now closed

[gillsman]

Hi,

This one is a new twist on an old theme, I have been running Utorrent for ages & have had green circle & open port, (I use the upnp option) suddenly a couple of days ago I have a yellow triangle & if I test port forwarding it says "ports closed". Now here's the odd bit, I have a home network via a wireless router, just two pc's on the network, mine with the above mentioned problem & my Son's which works fine I.E green circle port open, so the router must be ok, I have tried shutting my software firewall down & it still makes no difference, I have made no alterations to my pc's settings recently. If I set SSDP in services.mcs to auto or disable it makes no difference although I normally have it disabled as it makes some icons in taskbar dissapear (a bug I think). The thing is it was fine & all of a sudden it's not, strangely though downloads with plenty of seeds / peers still get good speeds occasionally.

[jewelisheaven]

As long as the yellow icon does not turn red there is not a problem.

It is posible through random chance that both of your computers may request the same port forwarding... But if UPnP works to map the port it should be fine.

Have you tested with OOo torrents? The time when yellow changes to green means you are receiving incoming ("I" flag in Peers tab) connections.

[gillsman]

I have tried the OO0 torrents & they download very fast (speeds between 300 - 700kbs) but the circle NEVER goes green, always a yellow triangle & testing the port still says closed

[ajones81]

Just shutting the firewall down may not help as the system hooks are still in place (unless you're using the default Windows Firewall). Anyway, as the OpenOffice torrents download fine, I don't think you should be bothered by that yellow icon.

[gillsman]

Right I don't know if this is coincidence or not but I checked my Son's PC to see if there were any differences in settings, looking in services.msc the only difference I could see was TCP/IP NetBios helper was set to Auto on his & disabled on mine so I changed the setting & rebooted & heh presto I started UTorrent & got a port open when I tested it tried a download with plenty of seeds & I got a green light, hopefully it will stay like that!!

[ajones81]

Hmm... Good that you solved it. BTW, which router do you have? (For future readers of this thread.)

[gillsman]

That was the cause of another problem, I bought an unbranded so called "White box" range router from Maplins, hence I had no idea who the manufacturer was, so I was unable to follow the port forwarding instructions given on Utorrent site (as you need to select your brand) for that reason I had to enable UPNP as the only means of getting it to forward a port to the router. The moral ~ cheap is sometimes dearer!!

Thanks for your help & a merry xmas to you & all forum members.