Limewire keeps changing its mind!
 

Hey i have used limewire 4 bout 2 years now and recently the connection went really slow not exceeding 3kb/s! i looked on your other threads and i have changed all my firewall settings n' tht and it worked for a bit the wall came off the globe. but now limewire keeps changing the port numbers and the globe gets the wall again but comes off sometimes. i dont understand! i have 1meg broardband and the usal download speed is about 10-30kb/s i am getting really impatient here!

Please help!!!! i have no idea what to do!

thanks in advance

My LW's a bit possessed too... changes it's listening port sometimes:(

What are your details?

OS(Win XP etc)
LW & Java version (help > about LW & you'll see)
Firewall you're using
Modem/router brand & model
ISP
Connection type (DSL etc)
Where you connect from (home, school etc)
Are you sharing a connection with other computers
Is this your first try with LW

How have you got your firewall config (within LW's options) set... are you using UPnP or port forwarding?

I am using windows Xp
limewire 4.10.9
3com 11g router
my isp is manx telecom (isle of man, uk)
i have no idea the connection type
i am connecting from home and yes there is other people sharing the connection but tht aint usually a prob
i have configured the router to the ports in limewire
when i 1st did it it worked all dandy but it aint working now
this is driving me insane!
thankyou for the quick reply btw

Have you tried deleting the preferences folder? Do this with LW closed. You'll have to go through & reset all your options afterwards so if there are settings you're not sure of... make a note of them first. Instructions below
Fixes for LimeWire

ok done it all do i just open up limewire now?

Yeah, just restart LW & see how it goes for a while. I don't know that reconfiguring your router would do much but I'm a bit clueless with routers!
If it still changes on you, post back & someone here will be able to help you out;)

Does your router have UPnP enabled? If not, have you manually port forwarded? Manually port forwarding will keep the listening port consistent.

cool the wall has came off the globe! thanks a bunch birdy!
all my dowlnloads have restarted back to 0 is tht expected? i thought all the download details were handled in the downloads.dat and .bak? ah well small price to pay for faster downloads

THANKYOU!

yes i did enable the uPnP for my router tht did help before for a little bit

Hang on I was a bit premature there. That's great if it fixes your port changing problem but as for your slow speeds... looks like Manx might be using traffic shaping. This will cause your speeds to drop. This article has no date, which is really helpful, but it suggests that this is what's happening
http://www.dyband.com/documents/CaseStudy-Mannet.pdf

There was an article too from 2004 that mentioned Manx using Sandvine, which is a package for p2p control. You might just want to give them a call & ask them whether they are employing traffic shaping & if so, whether it's just at certain times of day. Some ISPs only do this during their "peak" times.

:)

My friend who works there said summin bout tht "they prob wont go to that extremes the are a bunch of cowboys most of the time" lol manx telecom is a bit behind in the times when it comes to connection speeds n' stuff i think, they are only beginning to bring the island up to 2meg in the main towns.

i have noticed in the past the the dowload speed does tend to accerate at about 5-8pm to about 25kb/s and then slow down but i thought that prob was due to the amount of peers that are online

I couldn't say for sure, I would've thought that 5-8pm is still peak time.
Anyway, see how you go with it all... hopefully you won't lose your port any more & your speeds will be ok!
:D

ARGH the wall has came back on the limewire globe! i havent changed anything since!

It sounds to me like you may have 2 problems. The 1st one is an unreliable UPnP built into your router. Not all brands of routers use the same UPnP technology & some are unreliable. That's why I was hinting at port forwarding before. But that's up to you.

Well I'm an idiot, LOTR I didn't even see your post.
"I have configured the router to the ports in LW" I read as port forwarding:o
(my 4.11.1 port changed last week with p/f in place)

... slinks off quietly.....

I have looked into that before and i dont want to mess up the network setup, cuz me dad takes his clients computers home to work on and we cant afford a virus infecting them, is it safe to port forward or should i just stick to slow downloads?

The difference between UPnP & PF is UPnP within the device opens whichever ports the UPnP capable program asks for. Whereas Port forwarding, you specify a particular port which is used all the time. It tends to be more reliable than UPnP. The other difference is you need to set up a static ip but that's nothing special. If you want instructions we'd need to know the specific model you're using. Port forwarding will only work with a single port per computer per program. So other computers on the network wouldn't be able to use the same port.

Oh Birdy ... that's never happened to me with PF. It's always remained the same listening port.

its a 3com 11g router i am not sure of the exact model number, i will have a bash at configuring it, hopefully this will work!

thanks for your help lotr!

Unless you have instructions in a manual or 3com web site, you can find some here http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm

ok i have tried the port forwarding bit.... it doesnt seem to change anything, i have just read up when looking online about port forwading for the 3com router that it is "Very very frustrating if your using P2P program such as Limewire, shareaza, etc 3com firewall is just too sensitive" this is porobably why i am having all these problems?

i tried it and I don’t think it agreed wit my system limewire couldn’t get any connection at all, and, for some strange reason decided it was going "old school" on me, you know the old look limewire used to have?, but ah well after I uninstalled it and reinstalled it twice and then took off all the ports n' stuff the firewall has strangely disappeared and the downloads started working a tad faster (averaging about 9-15Kb/s now which I am happy with) but its still got the older version look about it. I have looked in the about section and it says its 4.10.9 which is the latest version

the latest stable release is 4.10.9, which you should get from www.limewire.com only

that is where i got it from thats the thing that is seriously confusing me it is a proper copy from limewire.com so there really isnt any excuse, it loads up with the newest limewire logo and then loads into the old version, even though it says its version 4.10.9

if it says 4.10.9, try changing skins.

yup checked that also i unistalled limewire, and deleted any files names with limewire in it and then reinstalled the latest 4.10.9 version which installs fine, but when it has loaded its the old style. i tried changing the skins to see it it was just that but th skins are all the old looking type.:confused:

If you deleted your LW preferences folder then that will have also deleted your skins afaik. You can downld more from here http://www.limewire.com/english/content/skins.shtml

btw The LW 4.11.1 beta displayed the 4.10 logo. The 4.11.2 beta shows a 4.11 logo

Argh well i dont really care that much, limewire has stopped being skyitso on me now and the globe has no wall, downloads go at bout 30kb/s when everyone on my LAN is offline whcih i think is an achivement being 10x faster than it used to be. Thankyou all so much for helping me and hopefully i wont have to moan on the forum again:)

Thanks again
:p