View Source: AllowGnutellaTraffic

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Most internet file sharing these days is done on the Gnutella network.  For example, clients such as ~LimeWire, Morpheus, and Kazaa all operate on this network.

Gnutella is designed to work even if you are behind a firewall, by utilizing HTTP.  However, for the best Gnutella performance, you should modify your firewall to allow traffic through on native ~GnutellaNet (port 6346) instead.  This will significantly increase the number of results returned for your searches.

I was motivated to write this up because I run OpenBSD 2.8 on my firewall, and I didn't really find any info on the net about how to configure it to properly allow ~GnutellaNet traffic.  Note that the general ideas here are applicable on any firewall/gateway setup.  Also, newer versions of OpenBSD use a totally different firewall mechanism, so you will have to modify these rules.

First, edit your /etc/ipf.rules on your firewall and add the following:

<pre>
pass in quick on xl0 proto tcp from any port = 6346 to any port > 1024
</pre>

Then, edit /etc/ipnat.rules and add the following, _before any other directives__:

<pre>
rdr xl0 0.0.0.0/0 port 6346 -> 192.168.2.32 port 6346 tcpudp
</pre>

Note that you need to change the 192.168.2.32 address in the nat rule to the address of the system on your internal network that you want to run a gnutella client on.

Then, restart your firewall and nat:

<pre>
# ipnat -f /etc/ipnat.rules
# ipf -A -Fa -f /etc/ipf.rules -E
</pre>

After that, you should find that your gnutella client will report that it is no longer firewalled.

By the way, I use gtk-gnutella and heartily recommend it on unix platforms.  You have to have at least version .92 to get all the cool features like swarming and ultrapeer support, though.

--phil
4/19/03

View Source: AllowGnutellaTraffic

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