Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

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vincom2
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Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by vincom2 »

I don't know when exactly this problem started, but I only noticed it yesterday, and from what I can tell/remember, everything seemed to be going fine last week.
What happens is that right after I start deluge, utorrent port checker reports that the port I use for BT is open. After I leave torrents going for a while though, when I run the port checker again this time it reports that the port is closed. At first I tried switching from manual port forwarding to UPnP, and it seemed to work for a little while, but now it's back to "port closed" again.
The funny thing is that I have absolutely no idea whether the port checker is just wrong or this is an actual issue, because when I enable the health status plugin it reports that everything is fine (I assume that's what the "Health: OK" in the bottom statusbar means?), and I seem perfectly able to seed torrents at reasonable speeds. But there are a few torrents I'm currently downloading that don't seem to connect to any of the few seeds/peers available, so I'm wondering if that's because the seeds/peers are poor or it's an issue caused by port forwarding.

Incidentally, the reason I'm using utorrent's port checker instead of deluge's or canyouseeme is because the latter two (and just about every IP checker I've tried) report my IP as something different from what utorrent's checker gives, and report my BT port closed even after I've just started torrenting and utorrent's checker reports the port open. The utorrent checker IP is also the IP I find when I check the list of connected peers on the tracker of a torrent I'm currently downloading, so I'm assuming the rest are reporting some ISP proxy IP. Just out of curiosity, anyone have any idea why utorrent's checker can find the correct IP in this case, unlike the rest, and will this have any bearing on torrent speed? (I don't suppose it will though)

So, in summary: health checker plugin reports everything ok, torrents mostly seem to be running fine, but port checker will at first report open port and then report it closed a while later; only fix seems to be to restart deluge (even restarting the router seems to have no effect). Anyone have any idea what's wrong?
Thanks in advance!

p.s. I noticed a topic that seemed sort of similar on the first page of this forum, but didn't know if I should hijack the thread, so I decided to start a new one.

Edit: Ok, new update. My computer crashed :(, and after I restarted deluge, now the port checker says my BT port is open, but the deluge health status says "no incoming connections". Also, UPnP seemingly has stopped working, so I had to open the port manually. Also, the torrent that I could seed previously, when the port was reported "closed" but there were incoming connections, now doesn't seem to be seeding.
Any idea what's gone wrong this time?
andar
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Re: Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by andar »

vincom2 wrote:I don't know when exactly this problem started, but I only noticed it yesterday, and from what I can tell/remember, everything seemed to be going fine last week.
What happens is that right after I start deluge, utorrent port checker reports that the port I use for BT is open. After I leave torrents going for a while though, when I run the port checker again this time it reports that the port is closed. At first I tried switching from manual port forwarding to UPnP, and it seemed to work for a little while, but now it's back to "port closed" again.
The funny thing is that I have absolutely no idea whether the port checker is just wrong or this is an actual issue, because when I enable the health status plugin it reports that everything is fine (I assume that's what the "Health: OK" in the bottom statusbar means?), and I seem perfectly able to seed torrents at reasonable speeds. But there are a few torrents I'm currently downloading that don't seem to connect to any of the few seeds/peers available, so I'm wondering if that's because the seeds/peers are poor or it's an issue caused by port forwarding.

Incidentally, the reason I'm using utorrent's port checker instead of deluge's or canyouseeme is because the latter two (and just about every IP checker I've tried) report my IP as something different from what utorrent's checker gives, and report my BT port closed even after I've just started torrenting and utorrent's checker reports the port open. The utorrent checker IP is also the IP I find when I check the list of connected peers on the tracker of a torrent I'm currently downloading, so I'm assuming the rest are reporting some ISP proxy IP. Just out of curiosity, anyone have any idea why utorrent's checker can find the correct IP in this case, unlike the rest, and will this have any bearing on torrent speed? (I don't suppose it will though)

So, in summary: health checker plugin reports everything ok, torrents mostly seem to be running fine, but port checker will at first report open port and then report it closed a while later; only fix seems to be to restart deluge (even restarting the router seems to have no effect). Anyone have any idea what's wrong?
Thanks in advance!

p.s. I noticed a topic that seemed sort of similar on the first page of this forum, but didn't know if I should hijack the thread, so I decided to start a new one.

Edit: Ok, new update. My computer crashed :(, and after I restarted deluge, now the port checker says my BT port is open, but the deluge health status says "no incoming connections". Also, UPnP seemingly has stopped working, so I had to open the port manually. Also, the torrent that I could seed previously, when the port was reported "closed" but there were incoming connections, now doesn't seem to be seeding.
Any idea what's gone wrong this time?
The problem is likely attributed to your router dropping the connection when testing the port. Routers tend to get overloaded easily when using bittorrent since there is a high amount of connections made. When this happens, it will start dropping requests and thus the port will appear to be closed.
vincom2
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Re: Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by vincom2 »

andar wrote: The problem is likely attributed to your router dropping the connection when testing the port. Routers tend to get overloaded easily when using bittorrent since there is a high amount of connections made. When this happens, it will start dropping requests and thus the port will appear to be closed.
I see.

The real problem now though is the edited part of the post: port appears open, but deluge health status is "no incoming connections", and seeding isn't working.
I changed the BT port I was using earlier in an attempt to "fix" the port appearing closed problem. Could it be possible that that somehow caused this connectivity problem? Or if not, what other causes might there be and how could I fix the problem?
Thanks!
andar
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Re: Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by andar »

vincom2 wrote:
andar wrote: The problem is likely attributed to your router dropping the connection when testing the port. Routers tend to get overloaded easily when using bittorrent since there is a high amount of connections made. When this happens, it will start dropping requests and thus the port will appear to be closed.
I see.

The real problem now though is the edited part of the post: port appears open, but deluge health status is "no incoming connections", and seeding isn't working.
I changed the BT port I was using earlier in an attempt to "fix" the port appearing closed problem. Could it be possible that that somehow caused this connectivity problem? Or if not, what other causes might there be and how could I fix the problem?
Thanks!
Yes, it could cause a problem depending on how you port forward with your router. If you change the port number do not update your port forwarding rules in your router then the outside port will appear closed.
vincom2
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Re: Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by vincom2 »

andar wrote: Yes, it could cause a problem depending on how you port forward with your router. If you change the port number do not update your port forwarding rules in your router then the outside port will appear closed.
That's not it; my port forwarding was definitely updated.
But somehow, I got up this morning, restarted deluge, waited for a while, checked back, and now the health status says "OK". Honestly didn't do anything else, and am a little confused as to what exactly is happening T.T
But at least it (hopefully) works now.
Thanks anyway.
vincom2
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Re: Port forwarding mysteriously stops working after a while

Post by vincom2 »

Ok, I'm sorry for posting and posting over and over again, but just now I quit deluge and started it again and now it's back to the "no incoming connections" thing. I'm very sure my BT port is open and all, but I have this torrent with 8 seeds and 9 peers running, and none of them will connect, so I'm sure something's wrong.
This is really very frustrating :(
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