Thanks for the information on Bit Torrent. I have never successfully used it before (I tried once about 2 years ago), and I just spent a frustrating day repeating that experience. I got it installed, but after some hesitation, it quit every time I tried to download my target.

Knoppix, after more than a year, has a new version out, 5.3.0, and it is only available by torrent. I wanted to get it.

I have a router which enforces Zone Alarm (ZA) usage on my network, and multiple computers, each running ZA. I picked one old Win 98 computer, and reconfigured ZA on it so that none of the other computers could be reached from it. (Call me paranoid! ) Then I installed Bit Torrent on it, and tried to download the file. I got a diagnostic telling me that it could not accept incoming connections -- I should fix my firewall. After a few minutes, it quit. I tried many things in both ZA and the router, but nothing worked. I have browsed through the Bit Torrent website and the LifeHacker stuff, but haven't yet found any troubleshooting information.

Anyway, I appreciate the links, and if I find some answers, I'll report back here.

Hi docduke,

Maybe this could help you.
In order to make sure that the port which your torrent client is listening on is reachable from the Internet, I recommend you use this site:
http://www.canyouseeme.org/
As a last resort, you may find the netstat -ano command (or a little program from Sysinternals called TCPView) useful in order to really make sure that your assumption about the listening port is correct.
This should be enough for you to start troubleshooting, and I don't think you need to make your Win 98 PC the default DMZ server (that would be overkill).

This post has been edited by dserban: Mar 9 2008, 09:46 AM

I'm not sure that I really understant what happened, docduke, so maybe my answer will be "a cote de la plaque" (far near the target, some french forumers here should appreciate)
Did you try installing a server, or a client ? This is the first part, I think a standalone person or home network cannot be a server by himself.
Secondly, if you want to be a client, three things must occur simultaneously.
. The client software must run correctly.
. The total network must let you access the server.
. The owner of the file you want to download must bu up and running.
For instance, when, for my job, I need to install a new Linux distro, I cannot get it via torrent, because our company firewall blocks me.
And, home, I cannot download some ... err... files ... err... because my ISP firewall blocks the server.

So, maybe some of the bad conditions I meet at work or at home are also met at your side, that could be the reason for the torrents not to work properly.
And, of course, at home I have a 512 kilobytes Internet access, so I don't really see the power of torrents, that's why I never use them.
What I would suggest is first to test your home installation. Take a freshly installed PC (no firewall, no antispy, no antivirus, a quite sacrifyable system, for instance an USB BartPE system which you can easily reload from a backup.
Then, take a good torrent client, a lot of them are advertised around here. Then, downlod something, what you download hos no importance. For instance download the last porn movie abstract from a high-rated site (most of clients rate the site for a precise file, saying the number of downloads and the current state (green - very good, yellow - maybe, or red - forget about it).
Then, if you are able to download something, this means that your PC is correctly installed and your Internet provider lets you download. Then, add a firewall and see if you still can download the same file. Then add the antispy and the antivirus sofwares, and see where the error was.
And, of course, if you cannot follow my insructions because you have no system you can sacrify, then... keep away from toorent servers !
Hope this helped
Yordan

---------------
P.S. Sorry having been so long. Maybe I should have written this in a tutorial section and put the link here ?