port forwarding and firewalls?

A few things could be happening.

You do have a finite amount of bandwidth from your ISP. It is possible that the torrent is using all your available bandwidth. I used to set my download software to operate at 100% of my bandwidth and when I did so, I lost the ability to surf. I set the software to throttle back to a reasonable amount and I was able to surf.

Limewire and BitTorrent (uTorrent is a bitTorrent client) are notorious for spreading Spyware and Viruses. It's extremely possible that one or more of your downloads contained some form of malware which could be eating up your bandwidth. The firewall may simply be reacting to something happening on your system.

If neither of these, read on.

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To diagnose this properly, you'll want to understand what's going on. Time to put on your propeller hat as this may get a bit geeky:

Your ISP gives your router an IP address. We'll say 24.123.321.100 for this example

Your computer connects to your wireless router and is given an IP address on an internal private network. Lets say 192.168.1.100.

The next computer that connects to your wireless router gets 192.168.1.101. Then 102, 103, and so on.

When ANY computers in your internal network connect to the internet, they all go through the 24.123.321.100 address your ISP gave your router, so if you connect to a BitTorrent site, that site sees a request from 24.123.321.100. The site may send a request back to 24.123.321.100 on port 45223 (this is the port MY bitTorrent client is set to use. Yours may be different)

Your router will receive this but does not know what to do with it. Since your router does not run uTorrent it ignores it.

Port forwarding forwards requests that hit the router's port to one of the computers on the router's internal network on the same (or different) port.

For uTorrent, you would set your router to forward everything it sees for IP 24.123.321.100 on port 45223 to the same port on the computer inside at the address of 192.168.1.100 (Your PC running uTorrent).

You want to make sure that your PC always has the same IP address. Most routers will allow you to dedicate an internal IP address to a computer using it's MAC Address (a unique identifier that all networked devices have)

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If you're running a software firewall (you mention NetDefense) on your computer, it can also block traffic on specific ports or even to specific programs. Picture it as the bouncer at the door. It may allow people to come in one door but not another (allow certain ports). It may allow only Men to go in and out one door (block certain programs from using some or all ports). If it's malfunctioning it could be blocking your web browser, or malfunctioning and not allowing enough room for data to flow in and out properly.

In this case, you'll want to contact the Firewall manufacturer or remove and re-install the firewall software to operate properly and restrict only bad requests (i.e Viruses/Spyware trying to get in or out) and leave your actual surfing alone.

Hope this helps. Best of luck and feel free to contact me if you have further questions.

ok for starters it can no longer also be your FireWall. in the adventure that your in the back of a router its your router. searching on your router you should use PortForward. For some reason it sucks. To ahead your ports it shows you precisely what to do. in case you don't comprehend the router concepts or although you may could call your ISP. yet another basic way is to acquire the information of FileFront or yet another 0.33 social gathering. regrettably considering i'd elect extra concepts on the topic of your router or modem or although that's you employ. in case you does no longer concepts sending me an e-mail with the concepts i am going to furnish extra concepts on a thanks to fix the undertaking. I replaced into hoping this helped you. i comprehend how stressful it receives. ~iWaffle P.S. Are you operating Zone Alarm possibly? Or the different FireWall as well domicile windows FireWall? if so please enable me comprehend ASAP. considering those also have a tendency to dam snow fall Downloader.