How To Make P2P Programs to Work on Networks Using a Broadband Router

Configuring The Router

The exact options names and locations for your router configuration will vary depending on the router brand and model. In our examples we are using a D-Link DI-524 router and we think it is not so hard finding out how the options we will show are named on your particular case.

The first thing you will have to do is obviously enter the router control panel. If you don’t know how to do that, please read our tutorial on how to build a network using a broadband router to learn how this is done.

There you need to look for an option called “Virtual Server” or similar. On our router this option was the first found under “Advanced”, see Figure 15.

Figure 15: Virtual server option.

Here you will need to select “Enable”, give a name to this configuration (e.g., “eMule TCP Port”), enter the IP address of your computer (or the computer running your P2P program), select TCP, enter eMule TCP port number (4660) on both “Private Port” and “Public Port” fields (these fields can also be called “Internal Port” and “External Port”, respectively), select Always and click Apply. If you don’t know the IP address of your PC, click on Start, Run, Cmd and then type Ipconfig and hit Enter. This command will list the IP address your computer is using.

Figure 16: Opening the TCP port used by eMule.

Repeat the process for the UDP Port: select “Enable”, give a name to this configuration (e.g., “eMule UDP Port”), enter the IP address of your computer (or the computer running your P2P program), select UDP, enter eMule UDP port number (4670) on both “Private Port” and “Public Port” fields, select Always and click Apply.

Figure 17: Opening the UDP port used by eMule.

Now you will see these two new rules added and enabled on the Virtual Server section of your router, see Figure 18.

Figure 18: eMule TCP and UDP ports opened on our router.

Now you need to make your router to always assign the same IP address to your computer, otherwise your configuration will stop working if your router assigns a different IP address to your computer the next time your turn it on.