Help:Contents

The Panmasters Guide To Setting Your Connection Up - written by Smelly_Kat & various assorted others

There is an excellent guide for 1st time users of DC++ at http://www.b.ali.btinternet.co.uk/DCPlusPlus/gettingStarted.html. The guide below gives instructions on setting up your internet connection and DC++ client to connect best to other users. Or else you can use the Duefo guide from 2 years ago, http://www.tma.dsl.pipex.com/dc/newbies.html. Both give exellent helps for those new to DC++.

Whether you are on or off campus, you will need to make sure that any firewalls you may have are set to allow connections to and from DC++. To add an exception for DC++ on the Windows Firewall, go to Control Panel, Network Connections. Next right click on the connection you use to access the internet (Local Area Connection or Wireless Network Connection) and choose properties. Go to the Advanced tab and choose settings in the Windows Firewall. The Windows Firewall menu should appear. Finally, go to the Exceptions tab and choose add program; click browse and navigate to DC++ (C:\Program Files\DC++) and choose DCPlusPlus.exe. This should have added DC++ as an exception to the firewall so it will allow connections to and from it. Other firewalls should have manuals on the internet for settings up exceptions for programs.

1. For ON-CAMPUS people:

We recommend the use of s-tunnel for conencting to twofo from on campus. Details on how to use and where to find it can be found on the homepage of this wiki - http://www.twofo.co.uk/wiki. If you are having problems searching and downloading once connected to the hub, please try the following:

First go to http://checkip.dyndns.org/ and copy you IP. Next go into DC++ and under File -> Settings -> Connection Settings select 'Active' and paste your IP into the IP box. Leave the port boxes blank.

If it has worked previously, and no longer works now, PLEASE CHECK YOUR IP HAS NOT CHANGED!

If this doesn't work, check your firewall settings. Many firewalls will not allow conenctions to be made to or from DC++ for transfers or searches if there is no exception rule. There are instructions above for setting up the Windows Firewall to allow DC++.

If you are still connecting via SOCKS5 from on campus, to get full LAN speeds, you will most likely need to change back into active mode once connected to the hub. You can do this without reconnecting to the hub, just go into settings and change into active mode and put your IP in the IP box. You will not be able to connect to off campus people now that the traffic shaper is in place. DO NOT put your socks5 proxy IP into DC++ as this will not work. Please also note that using stunnel is he recommended method of connecting as it it much more stable

NB. On the newer versions of DC++ (>0.674), there is no option for active connection. Instead use the "Direct Connection" option with your IP in the "External/WAN IP" box.

Firewalling out Off Campus Connections

Due to the restrictions and threats of disconnections by ITS on campus, it is worthy thinking about blocking all external connections to DC++ on campus. This does NOT guarantee safety from ITS on campus, but it will stop you using any external bandwidth and hopefully keep you a bit more under the radar. Almost all the time, connections between on campus and off campus people are impossible due to the traffic shaper, so even without any kind of firewall rules in place you should not be transferring to or from somebody off campus. However, the connection attempts will be detected and blocked by the traffic shaper even if you do not see any transfers in DC++ (although a connection may rarely slip through the traffic shaper). Firewalling off campus out is only intended as an extra layer of security, and does not guarantee you safety from ITS.

So far, the only firewalls that have been reported to successfully block off campus connections are Norton Internet Security/Personal Firewall, ZoneAlarm, Kerio and Linux iptables. I have produced a guide to this for Norton 2005 (should be almost identical for later or earlier versions), and this can be found at http://manyhappy.members.beeb.net/Norton.pdf ZeeClone has dragged up a guide to doing it on ZoneAlarm from when he was on campus, and this is now posted at http://manyhappy.members.beeb.net/ZoneAlarm.pdf Bear in mind that this effectively puts the resnet, and all associated viruses on a trusted Zone, so is a bit of a security risk. If you find a better way of doing it (properly) in ZoneAlarm, pm one ofthe ops and I'll change the guide. If there are any other problems with the guides itself, please contact astropoint/astro on the hub or on the forums and I shall try to correct them

A guide for setting up the Linux personal firewall, iptables, to block external connections, is available here http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~csucda/iptables.html

There is, as yet, no guide for Kerio. If you successfully manage to block external traffic with it or any other firewall, please note down the steps you took so that instructions can be prepared for other people to follow.

2. For OFF-CAMPUS people:

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR ROUTER, YOU CAN'T PORT FORWARD, SO DON'T BOTHER ASKING HOW! This is the case for ALL PLU house routers. If you are in this situation, you will have to use passive mode.

WARNING: PASSIVE MODE IS A LAST RESORT. USING IT WILL CAUSE PAIN, SUFFERING, AND PREVENT YOU DOWNLOADING FROM ALOT OF PEOPLE. If you are using passive mode because you don't understand how to set up port forwarding, DON'T! Follow the guide below or ask on the hub if there are bits of it you don't understand.

NB. You will NOT get anything like the transfer speeds you got when you were on campus. Between 10kb/s and 30kb/s is a normal download speed off campus

Port Forwarding

Firstly you need to log into your router, you can do this by opening your Internet browser and typing your 'default gateway' address into the address bar then press enter. (You can find your default gateway address by going to Start -> Run then type 'cmd' and press enter. When the command window is open type 'ipconfig/all'. This will display all the information you need about your network including your default gateway address). Next you will need your routers user name and password (the default values can be found in your router manual). After entering the correct user name and password into your router you should be logged into you router.

Now for the port forwarding part.....every router is different so I can't give explicit instructions. Basically what you want to do is direct a port to your network IP address. Once you're logged into your router look for 'Port Forwarding', 'Virtual Servers' or 'Port Redirection'. You can forward any port that you like, a good idea is to forward a high numbered port, e.g. 15000 as this is unlikely to be used for anything else. You will need to forward both TCP and UDP to your computers network IP (for example 192.168.1.2). You can get detailed information on how to do this for your specific router at http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm

Once you've forwarded your ports go into DC++ connection settings (File -> Settings -> Connection Settings) and select 'Active' and enter your external IP address into the box (you can find this at http://checkip.dyndns.org/). In the port boxes fill in the port(s) you've forwarded to your computer (for example 1411 TCP and 1411 UDP). NB. On the newer versions of DC++ (>0.674), there is no option for active connection. Instead use the "Direct Connection" option with your IP in the "External/WAN IP" box, with ports in the TCP and UPD boxes as before

It might also be a good idea to assign your computer a static IP address on your network. The port forwarding will only work if your computer has the correct network IP. IP addresses can be assigned to the various computers located on the network fairly randomly and there is no guarantee that you will be assigneed the same IP as before. For instructions on setting up your computer to have a static network IP address, go to http://www.portforward.com/networking/static-xp.htm .

Alternatively, you can enable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) in your router instead of port forwarding. Once you've done this go into DC++ advanced settings (File -> Settings -> Advanced) and tick the 'Enable UPnP control' box. Next go into connection settings (File -> Settings -> Connection Settings) and select 'Active' and enter your external IP address (you can find this at http://checkip.dyndns.org/ ). Note: UPnP control is only available on the latest versions of DC++, you can get the latest version from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dcplusplus/DCPlusPlus-0.691.exe?use_mirror=heanet

If you have any problems have a look at http://www.twofo.co.uk/problems.php. If none of the above works for you then you will have to use 'Passive' mode which will work but you will be limited in the number of people you can connect to so only use passive mode as a last resort!

Note for Off-Campus users, sharing a connection: If you are sharing an Internet connection with other computer users you may want more than one person to connect to DC++ at the same time. If you all use UPnP, as above, this should just work automatically. If you use manual port forwarding you need to have a different port (e.g. 45551,45552,45553 ) forwarded to each internal IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, 192.168.1.4 ), and configure each DC++ client with the external IP address (http://checkip.dyndns.org/) and the matching port. You must forward both TCP and UDP on each port, as mentioned above. You may find you encounter a problem with internal IP addresses changing on a wireless network - if you consult your wireless router manual it might be possible to fix this by binding certain internal IP addresses to certain MAC addresses.