ASC555 & Birdy

One of the worse things about using LW, which is not LW's fault, is that in order to get the best from it you have to go through a (seemingly) never ending learning curve.

Let me explain, when I had dial up it is very simple to use but very slow so I moved up to ADSL (broadband). I configured my software, MTU's and other stuff, as instructed by my ISP, to get the connection working at peak efficiency and, for a few months, everything is fine.

Then I find out that my ISP has secretly installed "Traffic Shaping Techniques" which has effectively killed off my connection to the P2P network and undermined my reason for getting broadband in the first place.

So I change ISPs to one that isn't anti-P2P, get a new modem (which is a modem router combo), set everything up and, lo and behold, all my internet apps work except for LW, I now can't get rid of the "brick wall in front of the world" icon.

After some frantic research, I found out that my new modem/router has a built in firewall, which I try to switch off. Only later to find out, by some more frantic reading and hair pulling, that the inbuilt firewall cannot be switched off via the configuration software it can only be totally switch off via some arcane command line method.

After much swearing and gritting of teeth, I am now told that in order to get LW to work properly I have to PORT FORWARD and set up a temporary static IP address.

Back in the "dial up" days I did not need to know about PORTS (whether they could be forwarded or not), IP Addresses and stuff like that, now I have to know in order to get back to stage one, using LW without problems.

Wearing down (and loosing hair) but still soldiering on.



UK Bob