What's a router?

[thepenguinslayer]

I've seen tons of posts saying what ports to open to get BT to go faster, but I have no idea what a router is, here to find these port things, much less how to open them. Anyone care to give me a simple step-by-step rundown of how to do this? It'd be very appreciated.

[Tass]

a router is a little box the splits the internet connection between multiple computers. iv gathered that ports arnt actually on the router itself, it more in the settings. iv tried this personally, but get stuck on cirtain steps where mine isnt like theirs...now that i think about it, i think im in the same boat as you =( sorry

[Wilik]

Your best bet is to first dertermin the type of router you have, if you have one at all. Once you figure that out let me know and i'll beable to help you more.

[thepenguinslayer]

The router my household uses is a Linksys. Currently, there are three (including my own) computers getting a connection through it. All are PCs and run on Windows XP. Does that help?

[caset]

bittorrent tends to run on ports 6881-6999 also dependant on your bt settings, now for a linksys router your port forwarding settings should be in the advanced section of the reouter settings (ip to access the settings is 192.168.1.1 in most versions) also its always good to place your external ip (BNL IP CHECK (http://www.bnl.gov/itd/webapps/checkip_bnl.asp)) in the bittorrent settings (when working behind a router) -- another complete alternative is to set yourself as a DMZ Host, which in the words of linksys "This feature sets a local user to be exposed to the Internet. Any user on the Internet can access in/out data from the DMZ host. Enable the feature as you wish to use special-purpose service." it effectively makes it as though the DMZ Host is not behind a router in all cases except for your ip address.

[thepenguinslayer]

Huh? o_O;

[SuntUrioN]

Access your Linksys Firewall Router's web admin page, according to the instructions in the manual for your router. You will probably need to enter a password.
At the top of the web page there is a series of navigational links, and you want the one that says "Advanced". From there, move on to "Forwarding".
Find an empty row in the form on that page, and fill in the name ("BitTorrent"), the port range (6881 to 6889), check the TCP box, and set the IP address to the one that your computer has.
Check the Enable box then click the Apply button to save the changes

[kage_bunshin]

If i remember correctly, the username is left blank, and the password is admin

i've had to configure a linksys router before

[Kyoske]

I'm rather clueless on what a router is too. I've been told that I don't have one. My download times are TERRIBLE, like hundreds of hours.